


Friends and Foes

by Bacner



Category: Agents of SHIELD - Fandom, MCU, Marvel
Genre: Angst, Canon, F/M, Family, Gen, Hellfire, Hydra, Inhumans - Freeform, Marvel - Freeform, May's daughter, Redemption, S3-AU, SHIELD, Secret Empire, mcu - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-27
Updated: 2016-03-03
Packaged: 2018-05-16 16:42:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 23,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5832973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bacner/pseuds/Bacner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As the agency recovers from the disaster of the Iliad and plan on dealing with Ward, Hydra and the entire mess, the appearance of Melinda' estranged daughter - and a powerful new gifted - change their plans considerably. Meanwhile, what is Ward himself up to?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Grant Ward isn't having a good life lately. Between S.H.I.E.L.D., Hydra, and Kara's demise, there's nothing worth holding onto - not anymore. True, he may've taken over Hydra (to a point, it still has several older heads left, and from what he had heard from John, Bakshi, and few others, Hydra is more than what it seems, even to S.H.I.E.L.D. - not that he cares about that agency anymore), but this isn't what he had wanted - ever. He knows, in particular, how Kara would feel about that, the deserved disgust she would feel for him if she knew about this - and it doesn't do any wonders for his temper, (which is already badly frayed). He doesn't care - only he does. He is a man who could be anyone, can be anyone, actually - but he wants to be himself, whatever or whoever that is.

Only he cannot - not without S.H.I.E.L.D. breaking in through his door whenever they feel like it. Ever since he rejected their offer of T.A.H.I.T.I. (and how - but he was a fool, and now Kara is dead because of his stupidity), they have started to treat his continued existence as a challenge (Coulson in particular - fool me twice and all that hype), and they won't let him live in peace. That's ok, he had made his peace with this fact, he is going to die - eventually, (though probably sooner than even he had expected to), and he is just going to see if he cannot kill some of them in the process, starting perhaps with...

Grant blinks, as he examines the data. There are perks for being a head of Hydra - if one cares about such things. Grant most certainly does not. In fact, if there were any alternatives, he might just take any of them - this way, at least, when he meets Kara in the afterlife she won't be too disgusted with him. 

This, however... um. This is all that Grant Ward can say when he learns about the Cavalry's daughter (and the only child, period). She is already under Hydra control (again, in a manner of speaking), so all that is left for Grant to do is to reach out and grasp her and-

Screw this. Grant isn't S.H.I.E.L.D., isn't Hydra, he honestly doesn't know what to do with the rest of his life, however short it may be, but being a true head of Hydra? No, just no. Grant Ward knows what he has to do, and so he does it. 

He makes a call.

///

Melinda May loves her parents, both of them, though for now she is staying with her father. He needs her more, being stuck with a walker after a car accident. (Melinda cannot prove anything, the hit-and-run doesn't even look suspicious, but she doesn't care. Her father is hurt, and she is staying with him, at his home, to help him - but somehow her nerves are being stretched and frayed all the same. This sucks.) Regardless, she is finding herself missing S.H.I.E.L.D. and Coulson and Skye more and more daily. She wants to be a part of S.H.I.E.L.D., especially since Andrew had broken things off with her again, but...she honestly doesn't know if this is the right way to go either. She wants...she doesn't exactly know what she wants. It is annoying. Melinda May is a very precise person. An unknown variable, internal or otherwise, is not something that makes her happy. Her father's oh-so-helpful advice isn't helpful, not particularly, either.

The sudden knock on the door startles Melinda - if it was someone else, they could be described as frightened. There are very few people who can sneak up on her, and at least one of them is not her friend, nowhere near this. So naturally (for a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, that is), she grabs one of her kitchen knives (they are all interchangeable in her grip, so really, what's the difference?) and opens the door, doing her best to startle the intruder... she fails.

"Hey," Grant Ward speaks smugly, with a cocky smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes. The stiletto in his hand is much smaller than Melinda's knife, but judging by how easily he is handling it, Melinda really isn't putting much hope into her bigger blade; she just exhales and takes her fighting stance. Twice already she and Grant had fought each other, and each had won - once. Now, it seems, the third and final round is upon them.

...Or not, as Grant just gets up, the smug grin falling of his face, and there is something else deep in his eyes - disgust. Melinda knows it well, she had given it to Grant Ward herself several times in the past, ever since his true allegiance became known.

"Let's talk about your family," Grant beckons, and a couple of minions wheel a chair with a person, covered up, towards her. "You really care about your old man and lady, don't you?"

May blinks, once, and doesn't break her stance. Rather, she tenses and prepares to lunge.

"Pity that, apparently, you don't feel the same way towards your daughter," Grant continues in the same conversational tone, while gesturing towards the chair. 

Something explodes in Melinda May's skull. "Naomi?!" she screeches all over the neighborhood, lunging towards the wheelchair. The knife is thrown away, discarded, and Melinda pulls down the covers. It is her daughter, her and Andrew's daughter, if you want to to get technical, and right now she looks as if she had been partying hard with Lindsay Lohan for the last few years of her life - in a bad way.

"What did you do to her, you monster?!" Melinda shrieks loudly enough to frighten away the local birds.

"I didn't do anything." The smugness is all gone, leaving behind a chill that would cause a polar bear to shiver. Melinda can probably fight off a polar bear, but the words cause her to shiver too. "You should really talk to your man instead. But just like the rest of S.H.I.E.L.D., starting with your dear director, you would rather chase enemies abroad than clean your own house. For the last 5 years and 9 months, it seems, your daughter was in a very bad place. Start doing something about it, Cavalry, or are you as hollow as you are rumored to be for the last 7 years?"

Without waiting for Melinda's answer, Grant turns around and leaves (his minions are already long gone). Not that Cavalry misses him - her own father has appeared on the scene, and upon seeing his only grandchild's disastrous conditions, he shrieks even louder, perhaps, than Melinda herself did:

"Naomi?!"

///

The agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. arrived in record time. Between Melinda herself and both of her parents (naturally, her mother arrived ASAP as soon as Melinda called her about her daughter) they managed to convey to Coulson precisely and succinctly (cough) that this wasn't time to dawdle, so here they were.

"Where's Simmons?" May asked curtly of Bobbi Morse.

"Um," Bobbi twitched - right now Melinda looked even more intimidating than the usual. "After you left, an alien rock ate her? I'm taking over for her in the lab? As a field medic too-"

"Good," Melinda cut her off. "That is Naomi. She's in trouble. Hydra - or someone worse - did something to her, and we need to cure her. Please!"

"On it," Bobbi gulped. Between Melinda's tearful 'please' and her parents' patented May glares (even more improved due to their advanced age), 'no' wasn't really an option, even if a teenager's life wasn't on the line. "Got it. People, let's get her back to HQ medical bay, shall we?"

There were no arguments, but Skye did sidle to May.

"Yes?" the older woman gave the so-called 'hacktivist' a look. "What?"

"Where do you want us to start?" Skye countered instead. 

May drummed her fingers. "With Andrew," she finally was able to reply to her friend's answer in a censored way. "I want to know where the- where the- where he was while something was happening to Naomi! She's his daughter too, you know!" She was - embarrassingly - about to break into tears, when she noticed someone outside the hospital's window (it was a small town hospital, not very tall or big, BTW), and she was quite confident that she knew who.

"Excuse me," she pulled Skye aside and went outside, jumping out of the second floor window and landing lightly on her feet, because she was the Cavalry, screw this, and she had enough. 

"Grant! I know you're here! I owe you one! Now show yourself!"

"This is the most messed-up example of feminine logic that I have ever heard." The man is not Grant Ward, (though for a moment Melinda thought differently for some reason), but rather a gifted of some sort - well, not of some sort. He's gifted, period. He looks rather like a more humanoid version of Tolkien's balrogs, (unlike Lash, for example, who is more of a Tolkien troll or ogre, conversely), and is doing his best not to look threatening, short of a white flag of truce. "But I'm not Hydra. My name is Hudima. Or Hellfire, if you would prefer."

"Ok," Melinda is getting back into her Cavalry mode. It helps some. She didn't expect this. A bit. "Why are you here?"

"I am looking for a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent named Barbara Morse," the giant gifted replies, still trying to go for a disarming smile (and failing - sort of). "You see, me, I'm not an agent, I'm not one of you. But, but I used to work with her in regards to Index-related matters and I would like to speak to her - please?"

Melinda blinked. "Morse worked with Index-related matters?" she asked the first thing that came to her mind.

"Yes! She and her S.O., agent Victoria Hand. Can I speak to her - agent Morse, I mean? Agent Hand is in Australia-"

Melinda opened her mouth to correct her new 'friend', when the doors of the hospital opened. Skye and Hunter were in the lead, followed by Mack and Bobbi who were gently carrying Naomi out on a stretcher - and then they saw May and her new interlocutor and stiffened.

"Mmm... Ggg... H-Hudima," Bobbi managed to speak. "You're back."

"I never left. You know it," Hudima spoke in a rather choppy manner. "How are you? Buried anyone lately, mm?"

Bobbi went pale, her mouth opened and closed - soundlessly. This was the most scared May had seen the other woman since Morse had switched her allegiance from late Gonzales' over to Coulson, which wasn't a bad thing, right?

"May," Skye (well, apparently she began to call herself Daisy when Melinda herself had left S.H.I.E.L.D. for her time off) called, "who is this?"

"My name is Hudima, princess," the big gifted answered instead, trying once more to make himself look non-threatening, (and not quite succeeding). "Please! I mean no harm!"

"I'm no one's princess," Skye replied curtly, even as she is measured him up as a threat and didn't like what she saw. "Got it?"

"You're a daughter of Jiaying," Hudima raised one eyebrow. "Interesting. What are you, then?"

"An agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.," Skye snapped. "Got it?"

"Fair enough. Then tell me, agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., which one of your co-workers is in charge of the Index now? Agent Morse or someone else?"

"Um," Skye looked between Melinda and Mack. "Guys, senior agents?"

"Why don't we talk about it on our way to the HQ?" Melinda decided to take charge of the situation. "And then we'll talk."

"If this is Andrew Garner's daughter and you're his wife, then we must," the foreign accent of the gifted came and went, but it was there, apparently. "Please, lead on."

_TBC_


	2. Chapter 1.2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An uncomfortable ride back to the HQ. More questions are raised, and the answers probably won't be any good, either.

The flight back to the HQ is subdued, even by the standards of S.H.I.E.L.D. True, lately the mood in the agency has never been very cheery, but right now? The mood was largely confused and worried than anything else. Considering that it was agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. that one was talking about, this was not a good combination. 

Skye (well, Daisy as she took to calling herself lately), for one would've liked to blame it all the new guy - well, sort of a new guy. So far he wasn't doing anything S.H.I.E.L.D.-like, he just did his best to blend with his new surroundings - considering that he was one of the biggest men (and InHumans, too) it was no easy feat - but somehow he managed. He didn't loom or anything, he just was there, in the background, this was it. 

...For some reason Daisy found this to be very annoying. Well, not 'very', but still annoying. It was her second non-Li Shi gifted, and so far he was... avoiding her? Doing his best not to communicate with her? What? (And 'princess', seriously?)

"What did you find?" Melinda spoke up, quietly but firmly.

"Well, Andrew has-got sources of income beyond even what he made as a teacher, a psychologist, etc," Skye admitted, licking her lips, feeling naturally nervous in Melinda's presence. "But for most of his life he had been largely hoarding them, not spending anything beyond his obvious means. Judging by the lack of IRS reports, he got away with them, too. In the last months, however, this changed - he has become much more active, he is more travelling around the world, he is actually living up to his finances-"

"Any conclusions?" Melinda interrupted the younger woman, who was working herself into something suspiciously like a rant.

"It all began after our mess with the Iliad," Skye confessed. "After the new InHumans began to appear, you see? Melinda, did Andrew work with the Index for S.H.I.E.L.D. somehow?"

"Andrew? No," Melinda frowned, clearly thoughtful now. "He...didn't like S.H.I.E.L.D. very much. He didn't have too many problems with me working for it, at least until Bahrain, but he himself? He had no intent of becoming an agent. Why do you ask?"

"You mean besides the obvious connection?" Skye (well, Daisy, she had to remember to call herself that), "some of the money that came to him came from S.H.I.E.L.D. - the old S.H.I.E.L.D., rather than us. See these accounts and transfer numbers?"

"Yeah?"

"They're S.H.I.E.L.D.'s. Believe me, I recognize the old agency's electronic signature after I've hacked them- it- you a few times."

Melinda thoughtfully looked at Skye's data, thought about it, and began to leaf through a folder that Skye didn't remember seeing in Melinda's possession back in the hospital...but admittedly, she wasn't paying the older woman too much close attention - May was acting too OOC for that...and for a good reason, obviously...

"Some things do not add up with the others, not yet," she spoke mostly to herself, than to Skye or anyone else. "I need to talk to Andrew; I need to talk to Phil; I need to talk to - Morse?"

"Yes?" the blonde asked, as she approached Melinda, Daisy and the gifted, who was still sitting near them (but was currently involved in some weird stare-down face-off with Hunter). 

"Well, you're here, rather than over there, with Naomi," Melinda pointed out reasonably. "I'm guessing that you have a reason why?"

"Oh, of course!" Bobbi said belatedly. "Blonde moment... never mind," she finished quickly, when she saw Melinda's gaze. "I came over to tell you that your daughter is ok - in a matter of speaking. She's going to live."

"Can you elaborate?" May ground out. 

Bobbi opened her mouth, met - gaze-first - the big gifted, her former (or not so former?) friend, closed her mouth, exhaled and started again:

"Agent May? Your daughter is suffering from dehydration, muscle degeneration, and substance abuse - primarily alcohol. She is young an healthy and we've reached her just in time, so the damage is reversible and we're going to reverse it. Otherwise, there is nothing wrong with her - physically. I'm not sure about the mental state. Someone had been keeping her drunk and 'out of it' for a long time."

"Five years, maybe?" May said in a tone-neutral voice, but Bobbi blanched and looked around, apparently wondering if she could hide somewhere after this. 

(Skye, for one, thought that Bobbi just might accomplish this. If Hudima had just blended into the background and became little more than a shadow on the wall, then Bobbi had became a ghost - the reappearance of this face from her past had clearly shaken her, making her fall silent...and more May-like...as she hovered around her new patient in a brisk and professional manner - but also a silent one. Morse may not have it as bad as her man did, but she generally didn't do silence either, but now - she was as silent as May would be on a bad day...such as today. Until today, Skye never understood how much May had mellowed out since their initial meeting on the Bus. Now, between her and the older generation she understood; she understood and she wanted the 'new' May back. She also had few questions for Andrew herself - ever since he returned to S.H.I.E.L.D. and began to cooperate with them, he seemed a friendly and amenable man, so this sort of OOC behavior for him was...disturbing. Star Wars level of disturbing, actually...)

"Perhaps," Bobbi admitted. "Certainly more than two. May, you rescued her just in time-"

"It wasn't me. It was Ward," May said with venom. "I think he is still on his redemption kick."

"Maybe. But you still owe him one - we owe him one this time, honestly," Bobbi looked uncomfortable. "What did he want?"

"He never told me," May twitched slightly (but for her it was a lot). "He said... never mind, what he said."

"Ok, do you want to check on your daughter?" Bobbi decided to change the topic - ever so 'subtly'. 

"Do I?" Melinda immediately got onto her feet in one smooth, sinuous movement, and walked forth towards the other side of the plane, leaving Bobbi and Skye on their own with the big man. The fact that he was gifted didn't make it any easier - at least not for Skye. After the final fight with her mother (and the run-in with Lash) she would rather not fight another InHuman so soon, especially with an ill civilian so close at hand...

"So, long time no see," Bobbi, apparently, decided to break the silence first. "I'm surprised that you've emerged-"

The big man, Hudima or Hellfire, gave her a look and stayed silent. Seriously, after Ward and May he was probably the quietest person Skye has ever met. "The princess has found something interesting about Andrew Garner and S.H.I.E.L.D.," the man had finally replied. "Maybe you can check it out for yourself?"

"What?" Bobbi gave a brief look at Skye's tablet, then took a second, longer one. "Oh. This is interesting."

"What?" Skye involuntarily echoed Bobbi. "What's so interesting?"

"Those sums - they're stable, compatible, for what assets, civilian agents used to be paid in regards to the Index," Bobbi blinked. "I didn't know that Garner was with S.H.I.E.L.D."

"He isn't," Skye replied. "May said just now that he didn't like the agency-"

"Ah," Hudima rumbled, startling the smaller woman. "Victoria Hand, Morse?"

"Possibly - yeah," Bobbi nodded, clearly growing further upset by this revelation. "She was my supervising officer, but she knew, she could do what I never could, seduction or otherwise, you know?"

"Are we talking agent abandonment here?" Skye grimaced. It was bad to speak ill of the dead, especially where Grant Ward was involved, but still. "The same agent Hand-"

"Believe me, we do," Bobbi confessed. "Hunter calls me a she-demon on occassion, this is almost a term of endearment between us now, but Morse? She's the original she-demon, she could eat me, and still have plenty of room to use Lance as after-dinner entertainment."

"Well, thank you very much!" Lance joined the other three. "Bob, I don't know what you've done-"

"Gave May Jr. an IV drip to flush all the remaining resident alcohol and soporific pills out of her system-"

"But it is working miracles," Hunter shrugged. "Good for them. I'm giving the May family some privacy. Mack has notified that we're going to land soon, BTW."

"Good. The sooner we can get Miss May into the medbay, the better," Bobbi said firmly. 

There was a pause - evidently neither Hunter nor Morse knew how to break it, until-

"So, who are you to Bob, exactly?" the former SAS-man asked the InHuman.

"Hunter," Bobbi's voice was almost as lifeless as May's normally was. "Remember me telling you about the one who got away? Well, that's him. You're looking at him."

There was a pause as two men alternated between looking at each other and at Bobbi. (Skye felt some annoyance about being ignored, but she didn't mind. Honest.)

"So, why didn't it work out?" Lance finally spoke in an odd tone of voice.

"I don't know; we just never fully clicked," Hudima replied. "The last I heard of her in a while was that she married you, apparently, and had your child? We had enough history together to make any encounters between us uncomfortable, as you can see, and besides? She had vanished in the Hydra uprising, so - yeah?"

There was an odd look on the British man's face as he regarded first the other man, and then Bobbi. "Bob, we'll need to talk," he began - and then the quinnjet landed, and they went to help get Naomi May (Garner?) into the medical wing of the HQ.

_TBC_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, look, a second chapter. Yay! Also, anyone is interested in this plot bunny? Morse and May get switched around - Morse is on team Bus from the start while May is friends with Gonzales instead of Coulson. How will this affect the AoS universe? Any ideas, canon or AU, are welcome.


	3. Chapter 1.2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> May's confrontation with her husband...doesn't happen. Instead, there's a car chase.

There were times when Phil Coulson honestly hated being the new director of (the new) S.H.I.E.L.D. - and the times of the Iliad siege or Ward's infiltration weren't even the worst; the times such as now and here, when people not so much cut him out as...left him to his own devices, to run S.H.I.E.L.D. per se were. Phil Coulson didn't like to admit it, (he probably didn't have to admit it - agents were perceptive people, after all), but he was something of an extravert - he liked being around people, and on his own? Not so much. 

...That had been partially a part of the reason why he got Grant Ward onto his team: back in the beginning he had honestly wanted to help the younger man, to come out of his shell and become a part of 'the team' - and it backfired very, very badly, especially for poor Fitz and Simmons, who actually bought Grant's act to the max...everyone had bought Grant's act...

Coulson banished the thought (not so much unwelcome as confusing) from his mind as the quinnjet landed, and a bunch of people (some of whom he didn't actually know) rushed by him, accompanying - or guiding - a medical gurney - with someone on it, ignoring him completely...

It was times like these that Coulson fought an urge to grab someone by the shoulder and tell them, peevishly: "I'm the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. - shouldn't someone tell me things?" - but he didn't. He was the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. after all. So instead he followed the crowd, hoping to learn what was going on here.

And he did.

///

"...This is Naomi?" Coulson kept his voice carefuly neutral as he joined the rest of the team around the local medical bay.

"Yes," Melinda's voice was evident with tight self-control, but Coulson, for one, knew that he had to pick words carefully, or else the sleeping dragon wouldn't lie anymore, no need for extra instructions here. 

"I meant," he made his voice even more carefully controlled, "what has happened to her?"

"This is what we're going to find out," Melinda exhaled as she handed to Phil a modest-looking grey folder. "Phil, keep it with you for now. I, Skye and - some other agents - will go and talk to Andrew."

"You don't have to, ma'am," a big stranger (a family relative of May's?) replied in a half-rumbling and half-familiar voice. "You can stay here. The Elders did deputize me to get rid of him-"

"You're not getting rid of him - not yet," Melinda shot back, "if Andrew's innocent, he'll stay. And if he is guilty - I'll get rid of him personally."

Everyone blanched at the last words. Right now, the Cavalry sounded less like a Cavalry and more like some sort of a dragon lady - with the emphasis on the dragon.

"Melinda," the voice of the elder (eldest?) May woman was even quieter than Melinda's own was, but Melinda turned back around immediately, her own simmering rage going down straight away. "Here. Use this if he is difficult."

...You just didn't expect a little elderly lady (Melinda took after her mother in height) to hand over an H&K sniper rifle to her daughter with a complete poker face (May took after her mother in this too). 

"A G3? Nice!" Hunter said cheerfully (the man just couldn't keep his mouth shut, it seemed). "Can I borrow it later?"

"Hunter, you idiot," Morse spoke with a voice that contained a strange mix of disgust, amusement, and exasperation. "You never ask this sort of thing about a sniper rifle - especially a personal one. I knew a man once who was very possessive about his PSG1: he was ready to admit that a Remington was better, but he just didn't care." She paused and turned to May. "Ma'am, if you aren't staying, can you take Lance with him? If he pushes you - you'll just break his limbs, but you'll let him live; your parents - probably not?"

"Agreed," May nodded and gave Lance a particularly heavy glare...which was blocked by the big gifted. 

"Ma'am," he said, doing his best to sound placatingly, but with a note of challenge, too. "About this-"

"You're coming too, Mr. Hudima," May's gaze shifted to the bigger man, but unlike Hunter, 'Hudima' dug in and stood his ground. "I haven't forgotten what you told me."

"No, ma'am, you don't understand. Your husband is killing people - people of Li Shi, who honestly don't want to fight with S.H.I.E.L.D. anymore-"

"I know, sir, but if you're lying...I must take this chance," Melinda's voice was as tight as a spring. "He and I...Andrew has his flaws, but-"

"You misunderstand me, ma'am. It's your show - I'm just asking if I can come along for the ride," Hudima replied. "Please? It'll be your call in the end."

"Thank you, sir," Melinda nodded. "Skye, you're with three of us. Ok?"

"Sure," Skye nodded with relief (and for a good reason - it seemed that May has toned down slightly through her conversation with the big gifted). "What's the plan?"

"I'll explain later," Melinda told the younger woman. "Follow me."

And the foursome left.

Coulson shifted his attention back to Naomi, but Morse was holding court there once more, (in a manner of speaking), and clearly his involvement was not required. Feeling rather lonely once more (and perhaps with justification), Coulson left.

///

For once (or yet again?) in her life, Skye (or Daisy) felt relieved at the fact that Lance Hunter couldn't really keep his mouth shut, not unless it was broken, most likely. Several minutes after they began to approach Andrew's place of work (by car, rather than by plane - Melinda decided to be subtle here), Lance broke the silence once more.

"So, you and Morse go way back?" he asked the other man in the car.

"Yes. We were partners. It was, it is different from what you have here, some sort of a bigger team, correct?" 'Mr. Hudima' gave a cautious look over his shoulder to May and Daisy (he was the one driving, BTW). "It was...Victoria Hand's idea. She's not a bad woman, but too much of a schemer."

"True," Hunter agreed, his voice carefully neutral. "Never liked her much myself. Izzy did, as did Idaho, but, yeah, I've changed some from the time when they were alive."  
"For good or bad?"

"I don't know," Hunter admitted. "I miss them, but, I'm not sure what would happen if they were to be brought back."

"They cannot be brought back-"

"Oh, you don't know, rumor has it that director Coulson was," Hunter looked more serious than he ever did and didn't even make a single joke about that. "I don't know if this fact or fiction and I don't want to learn. Now, about you-"

"I wasn't a part of S.H.I.E.L.D. I was more of an asset, I believe."

"True, he was," Skye admitted, reluctantly. May had promptly steered her in the direction of the old Index- and the Index-related activities of the old S.H.I.E.L.D., and she did find the man's description. For some reason it didn't bring her much comfort - yes, the description fit him, but somehow seeing him live was different. Plus, it was the Index - if Hydra hadn't risen, then Skye herself would be on it, most likely, and - yeah, this wasn't something that she had enjoyed thinking about, uh-uh. "Morse was your handler?"

"She's my partner," the retort came sharper, "or at least that's what Hand had planned - as part of her greater plans overall. Morse and I...well, we had closeness, and she is a very beautiful woman, though she was more of my father's type than mine."

"You have a father?"

"Dead now, for the last few years," the bitterness was back. "Hand was the closest thing I had for an aunt - she's not the maternal type."

"Oh no, back when I saw her in Australia, she was one cantankerous and garrulous old witch - the scar on her temple didn't help her temper any, but her mind was as sharp as ever," Lance shuddered. "Bob may be a she-devil but Victoria is the original model. The more time Bob spends away from her, the better."

Skye felt something give inside of her. She wasn't very fond of Victoria Hand herself, and it was possible that their new gifted friend/asset honestly didn't know any better, but Hunter? "She's dead," she told flatly the two men. "Mr. Hudima, you may not have known this-"

"How did she die?" 'Mr. Hudima' interrupted with a rather soft rumble (by his standards).

"Grant Ward killed her."

"When?" this time it was from Hunter.

"Um," Skye did some mental calculations and gave the date. "On that day or some time earlier."

"Uh-uh, doesn't end up," Lance shook his head. "Izzy and Idaho and I and the rest of the gang? We met her in Australia quite a while after that - she was scarred, she was pissed, she was angry - and she was alive and not a vampire or a zombie, so you've got your info wrong - possibly by her. She was less than happy by Coulson being made director...so were Izzy and even Idaho...me, I didn't care either way...maybe she just took a leaf off Coulson's own book and pretended to die...who knows?"

"Or maybe she's Hydra too?" the other man rumbled. "In the last years it became really hard to tell S.H.I.E.L.D. apart from Hydra, at least for such people as us - the gifted. Rather, they didn't trust either group."

"The gifted knew about Hydra?" May sounded interested despite her intentions. "...Well, this makes sense, I suppose. They had their own agents...such as you, Mr. Hudima, sir?"

"No," the gifted rumbled. "I had my own falling out with Jiaying quite some time before Hydra came into the light, I rather worked with Hand and Morse - they were more sane than Ms. Zabo was..." He paused. "But Victoria herself is a gifted - a very powerful, very old gifted. She didn't really need me - or Morse - to pass on information to the rest, you know?"

"...Garrett was Hydra, Hand's gifted, Barton is Hawkeye, Romanoff - the Black Widow," Skye finally broke the silence, "oh, and DC did die for slightly longer than a few minutes. Is there anyone in the old S.H.I.E.L.D. who was exactly who they appeared to be?"

"Me?" Melinda suggested carefully, looking askance at the two men. 

"You're a wife and a mother, May. You didn't look like either when we first met," there was a note of not-quite-bitterness in Skye's voice. "What's it like, BTW?"

Melinda opened her mouth to tell Skye (who apparently was calling herself Daisy these days for some reason) that she stopped being both ever since Bahrain, for she was unworthy to be either, when Hunter cleared his throat. 

"According to the GPs," the British native told both women, "we're here?"

///

Despite - or perhaps because of - the tense conversation in the car, (May was not anywhere so stupid as to believe that her biological family didn't strike some chord in the younger woman's soul, considering Skye's own family situation), the ride towards Andrew's office (May told the security guard that she wanted to surprise her husband; he took one look and buzzed her and Skye in, telling them that Dr. Garner was upstairs, in his office, so up they went. 

"So," Melinda told Skye as they counted the floors that they passed by via the elevator (the campus where Andrew worked and taught had some tall buildings, very modern and equipped - but then again, it did have the Starks (both Tony and his late father) among their alumni, so this wasn't so surprising, after all. Too modern to be Ivy League, but still. "You still want to talk about it?"

"No, but I want you to," Skye replied. "Oh, and my name is Daisy, BTW, now."

"...Why?"

"Why not? This was my true name - my parents gave it to me before they lost me," Skye shivered. "They, especially Jiaying, they weren't the best of people, but neither they were the worst." She looked askance at May. "This is not a dig, incidentally."

"I killed a child in Bahrain, you know this?" May replied softly, suspecting that Skye possibly did. "How could I look Naomi in the eyes after this?"

Before Skye could answer, the elevator's doors opened on their floor and they stepped out. After a tense question for another security officer to confirm that yes, Dr. Garner was in his office, May and Skye went there and entered.

He wasn't. In it. There was no mess, no sign of struggle, the office was just empty, and Andrew Garner's hat and coat were missing too. "I don't sense any secret passages," Skye confessed to May as the older woman slowly moved around the office, checking the books on the shelves and the documents on the table, in a methodical way that was sort of scary, even for Skye, so she bravely continued, "but I sense something...unusual. May, look outside and tell me if the current security guy is still there."

With a slight glare (for her, anyways), May complied and looked back outside. "He's...gone too," she spoke softly to the younger woman. "He must've left as soon as we went inside-"

"Check out the nearby offices on this floor," Skye's own voice was even and calm despite her increasing nervousness. "You don't have to be subtle-"

May kicked down one of the doors, then another one, and third.

"They're all empty," she commented after the fourth (or the fifth - not that Skye was counting).

"Yes," the younger woman said simply. "May, I think we've been had. Shall I call DC and ask for back-up?"

"No," May grew more thoughtful herself. "This here is something else - it doesn't feel like Hydra, not yet. Let's get back to the car and get out of here. It's getting late. I want to check on Naomi. Let's go home."

So they went.

///

"So Andrew has flown the coop?" Lance asked in his typical manner as the other man drove their car back to the HQ, but with his ears clearly cocked and alert. "You sure he wasn't kidnapped?"

"It's hard to say," Daisy confessed, "but the place - it didn't feel like a kidnapping scene. It doesn't have quite the right Hydra feel either."

"If it wasn't for Ward there wouldn't be a Hydra feel in this," Hunter snapped. "May, what was in this folder? Does your ex do business with Hydra, or Nautilus club, or who?"

"He's an agent of ATCU - you know, the new people - and they might be a cat's paw of Hydra's," May replied, however reluctantly.

"No, Coulson is sure that Hydra isn't sponsoring them," Hunter shook his head. "We're being boxed."

"Oh?" Skye looked around.

"Yeah," their 'driver' rumbled. "There's a grey Saab, a BMW, and now, as Hunter has noticed - a light blue Audi and a nasty pink Lotus Esprit too. They seem to be doing this properly too - are they Hydra?"

"Too subtle and professional for Hydra, too yuppie," May wrinkled her nose in thought. "Can you lose them?"

"Let's try. Where's the nearby exit?"

"17th," May pointed her finger at the exit, and Hudima complied, signalling at the last moment, accelerating onto the exit ramp, moving onto a big oval roundabout, cutting before a pair of slower-moving cars and swerving onto some road - fast. Within moments the main highway was far behind them, and before long they were lost among dark country lanes.

"Now what?" Lance asked, once the car slowed to a safer speed. "Cut the lights?"

"Did this already. Call the, uh, director? Coulson?"

"Already did," May replied from the back seat, as she assembled her G3. "He'll be looking through your folder, Mr. Hudima, even as we'll be getting back."

"Ok. Do we follow the GPs?"

"Yes," May nodded as she finished the assembly. "Skye, keep your powers ready and aim them at the outside - but only if there's trouble and when I give a signal..." 

"Trouble," Lance pointed towards their front, where two sets of lights had appeared - the Audi and the Lotus. Driving bonnet to bonnet, they clearly were done with just boxing the agents now. "Big guy, go!"

...From where Skye was sitting, there was very little room between their own vehicle and the left ninety-degree turn, but their driver delivered all the same, utilizing handbrake, accelerator and foot-brake like a pro. 

Soon, they were in another road, one overshadowed by trees, still bare, for right now it was winter in this part of the world. "Did we lose them this time?" Skye asked, just as from the behind came a series of tiny blue flashes and followed by the sound of bullets hitting their vehicle.

Hudima swore and released the wheel, his hands clenched tight, and so was his face. "Hunter, take over," he snapped.

"Are you hit?!" Hunter yelled as he took over the steering.

"This isn't about me, we must do something now or leave the car! Agent Melinda?" Hudima snapped. 

With a dazzling blast of its lights, the Saab came out of the darkness (by now, the sun had set and it was fully night), closing quickly. One of its passengers fired a couple of shots, openly aiming for the tires. 

"All right, this is it," Melinda growled, as she used the barrel of her own G3 to knock out one of their own weapons before firing a shot. One of the Saab's lights went dead. As that happened, the enemy driver seemed to lose control, rolling first right, then left - right into the middle of May's line of sight. She fired once, twice more, and the windshield of the Saab collapsed. The car itself hanged around the agents' rear bumper for a few moments, then faltered and swerved to the left. 

For a few moments the agents saw the Saab suspended perfectly in mid-air, and then it vanished in darkness, which was lit just moments later by a plume of fire.

"I think we should put some distance between ourselves and this wreck," Hunter muttered to the others.

"We must get out of our car now," Hudima replied instead. "Please?"

This was really the first time that he spoke in such a term, so instinctively the agents proper did just that.

"Now what?" Skye asked when they walked some distance away from their vehicle.

Hudima straightened out and released his inner tension with a snap. Before the agents' very eyes, their own car was consumed by fire and collapsed within moments.

"I, um, have been preventing this from happening for the last ten minutes?" Hudima looked embarassed rather than proud here. "I should've told you that we've been hit, but I could handle it - I'm a pyrokinetic, remember?"

"Fair enough, and thank you," Melinda nodded. "Can you do it in reverse?"

"I can do almost anything - with fire," Hudima nodded. "Ask Morse - she knows all about me doing this sort of thing."

"Can you do something about that?" May jabbed G3's barrel in the direction of the plume. The gifted nodded in reply, and concentrated, making a squeezing motion with his hands. Immediately, the flames died down on the wreck of a driver who had been crawling away from the wreckage.

"That's good enough?" Hudima asked May, who just nodded in reply and knocked the enemy out with the barrel of the G3. 

"Yes, now we can call Coulson and HQ again," she said curtly. 

"Ok," Skye nodded, as she took out the communicator to call Coulson and the HQ, before pausing. "Can I do that, BTW?" she asked the pyrokinetic gifted, trying to pretend that she wasn't impressed by his powers and control.

"Considering that you're very different from me and most other kinetics? It's complex to reply," the latter replied evenly. "You're a great person and prodigy according to the rumors, but this? This comes from practice and experience, something that you still lack. But don't worry - with time you will be able to do things that I never will be able to, because you're a creator and I'm not."

"What are you, then?" Skye said quietly. (She wasn't used to handle compliments, even awkward ones.) "A destroyer?"

"Sometimes, but I can be something of a healer too," Hudima nodded solemnly. "Speaking of which?" he pointed to the downed man.

"We have other medics on site other than Morse," May said simply as she pointed upwards, where a jet's bulk was darker than the night. "Our ride is here - let's go."

_TBC_  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, how do you like the chase scene? Did it work?


	4. Chapter 1.4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Naomi is finally awake. This is good.

...Phil Coulson listened to the narrative with barely a twitch of the eyelid. "So, this is how it went?" he asked, rhetorically, of Melinda and her team.

"Yes," Melinda nodded curtly. "Hydra might've been behind this, but you got to admit, this is somewhat new. Plus, Stark isn't Hydra, let's be frank here, neither is Maria, and they are involved in the university's running-"

"Does Andrew know about Stark's connection to S.H.I.E.L.D., new or old?" Coulson asked, sharply.

"Not from Maria. Or Nick," Melinda replied immediately. "Andrew was never initiated into S.H.I.E.L.D., at least by me?"

"Excuse me," Hudima actually raised his arm, as if he was a school boy of some sort. "How is one get initiated? In my case I was just found by Hand and her posse, told that S.H.I.E.L.D. was just the right place for me, period. Is it different for ordinary people?"

"Point," Lance admitted. "I just gave you a post-it note, remember? You nodded in agreement, this is it. Bob told me quite a different story - recruiting office and all, very much more formal. What's up?"

Coulson and May exchanged a look, then gave another one to the two men (and Skye). "Ok," Coulson confessed, "the thing is-"

"S.H.I.E.L.D. isn't Hydra," May said firmly. "It doesn't use incentives, or brainwashing, or anything like this - it doesn't. It does tend to use coercion, however, or rather - it tries to play the playing field. It tries to recruit people who are naturally inclined to join it initially, such as Skye - I mean Daisy," she shot a look to the younger woman. "Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, let's be honest here."

"But Ward was recruited properly, wasn't he?" Skye frowned. "There is no reason for DC and you and the others to abandon this scheme altogether."

"We hadn't," Melinda replied, looking oddly uncomfortable (for her, anyways). "We've just become more discreet-"

"They had me put out feelers for my old, mercenary crew," Lance explained, 'helpfully'. "Then they recruited them in bulk and sent with Fury to help the Avengers fight the Sokovia killer robot."

"This is different," May said simply. "Different people are hired to be agents for different levels-"

"Tiankong Chuju," Hudima exhaled, "this is how democracy works, actually. It gives equal opportunities to different people. How they use these opportunities is entirely up to them."

"...What did you call me now?" Skye finally exclaimed as the others just stared at the big gifted. "My name is Daisy-"

"Yes, Lance Hunter explained it to me while you were with agent May upstairs," Hudima nodded. "Your name is Sky Daisy, apparently, but you prefer to be called the last part. Fair enough, your family had lived in Li Shi - in China for the last thousand years or so, so naturally you gravitate towards an unusual name."

"Ok, now you're just messing with me and Daisy," Lance began, but the Daisy in question interrupted him:

"Really? You knew my biological family?" she asked softly.

"Not really," the other gifted shook his head. "I was never a part of Li Shi community, my speciality was India rather than China, but on occassion your mother would contact me regarding some InHuman business or other. She was a part of the more progressive wing in the InHuman community."

"Then where did it go wrong?" Coulson asked just as softly as Skye did.

"Tiankong Chuju's bloodline contains - for the last 1000 years or so, as I understood - the blood of undisputed queens of Li Shi," Hudima didn't back down. "It was never a very big family - not like the Hapsburgs or the Romanoffs, for example. Tiankong Chuju doesn't have any siblings, though rumors has it that her mother had tried, quite a lot of times... never mind. The thing is, Jiaying and her husband knew that S.H.I.E.L.D. had taken their daughter and hid her. For the rest of their lives Jiaying and her husband searched for their daughter, Jiaying's heir. And when they found her, their protectiveness went into overdrive. And when Jiaying saw that she had an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. for a daughter now, she went berserk and implemented her plan that she had been designing for the last few decades of her life. Sir, you did everything right, I wager, the odds were just against it."

"Why didn't we know this?" Coulson asked softly.

"Because of compartmentalization," Hunter snapped. "Out of all of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s features, this one is one of my least favorite. Maybe it is Hydra's influence or something, but S.H.I.E.L.D.'s agents tend to hoard their knowledge rather than share it-"

"Because knowledge is power, Lance Hunter," Hudima shrugged. "S.H.I.E.L.D. was full of powerful - or power-hungry - people. Why so surprised?"

"I don't know mate - I'm actually confused," Lance confessed. "Sometimes I honestly like being a part of the agency - and other times? If it wasn't Ward being somewhere out there, lurking in the wings, I would've just taken Bob and left."

"Well, what if we assume that S.H.I.E.L.D. can handle Ward without your help?" Melinda said in a strange tone of voice. "What then? Will you stay with us or will you go? Without any enmity, BTW?"

"Honestly?" Lance looked Melinda straight in the eye. "Right now I would like to talk to Bob first-"

"Talk to me about what?" Bobbi chose this moment to appear. "Melinda-"

"About Mason, Bob," Hunter's voice was more serious than Skye (or others) have ever heard him use. "I want us to talk about him."

"What about him?" Bobbi's face froze. So did her voice, and suddenly she was very reminiscent of Melinda May recently, for some reason. 

"Nothing," Lance got onto his own feet too. "Why are you here?"

"Naomi has woken up-"

Melinda was on her feet and moving towards the medical wing with almost the speed of light, leaving the others behind.

"Well," Coulson said slowly, "I suppose the rest of you should go with her too-"

"DC, come with us," Skye said simply. "You're a part of her family - obviously. Don't be obtuse."

"It's not that," Coulson protested as the three of them followed May down the corridor. (Bobbi and Lance were off to the side, arguing about something or someone sotto voce). "It's just, I don't know, it's her family. Plus, her parents never liked me, plus, I honestly don't know anything about her daughter - no one in Melinda's family had really wanted for Naomi to go into S.H.I.E.L.D., not even Melinda - hello, Fitz."

"Hello, sir. Hello, Skye - do I know you?" the younger man asked the big gifted.

"No, I don't think so," Hudima rumbled. "Nice to meet you too, agent Fizz."

Fitz blinked. "It's Fitz - agent doctor Leo Fitz, thank you very much, sir," he told huffily. "But don't call me that - I hate my name."

"Well, it is slightly humorous, but don't worry - I promise to call you agent Leo from now on."

"...I was talking about the Leo part," Fitz twitched again. 

"Just ignore him - I think he got issues regarding names," Coulson decided to intervene. "He's got problems with Daisy's name too."

Fitz blinked. "And Daisy is-?" he prompted carefully.

"Me," Skye said with a sigh. "I decided to change my name while you were away. Only it doesn't really seem to be working - May still calls me Skye, Coulson still calls me Skye half the time, Hudima here decided that my name is actually Sky Daisy, or-"

"Tiankong Chuju," the man in question said smoothly.

"-so yeah, I might as well stick with Skye."

"I agree," Fitz nodded seriously. "Skye is a lovely name. So's Daisy, of course, but Skye's better."

"Gee, thank you for two cents, agent Fizz," Skye said wryly. "BTW, how are you holding up in regards to Simmons?"

Before Fitz could snap at her pointed mangling of his name, or burst into tears about Simmons, they arrived at the medical wing.

///

"Mama?" It was the first word that Naomi May (well, Garner-May) said, when she opened her eyes and looked around. "Mam! And Gran! And Grandad! You're here!"

"Of course we're here, Naomi," Melinda said as she and her daughter instinctively hugged. (It may've been somewhat uncomfortable, but there was nothing stiff about it). "Where else would we be?"

"You left. You came back, but you left," Naomi muttered into her mother's shoulder (the two of them were actually of a similar build and height, but Naomi probably still had few more inches to grow left in her). "Why did you leave, mam?"

"Naomi," Melinda said with some very vivid bitterness (especially for her). "You don't know, you didn't know... I kiled a child in Bahrain. I killed her mother. I didn't mean to, but I killed them. I couldn't look you in the eye. I couldn't look Andrew in the eye. I left you with your father..." she paused and added in a more regular voice (for her, anyhow). "That was probably a mistake, wasn't it?"

"Yes, mam. Dad, he may be a nice guy, but he doesn't love me, he likes you better...where is he?" Naomi pulled herself out of Melinda's embrace and looked around. "Where-where am I? Something is wrong. What is it?"

"Miss May?" Coulson, who had been on the scene, (alongside others, even Hunter and Morse, but was staying at a distance to give Melinda and her family some immediate privacy), "I am, uh, director Coulson of S.H.I.E.L.D., and these are my agents. You're in one of our facilities-"

"Really?" Naomi blinked. "But mam was adamant - I'm not to be a part of S.H.I.E.L.D., this was one out of few things that she and dad had actually agreed on."

"Really?" Coulson shot May a look, and the Chinese woman actually avoided it. "Well, perhaps, but you're still one of us, at least to some extent. In any case, you still need few more days to recover."

"From what?" Naomi frowned, and despite the fact that her facial features (and the general skin color) were more like Andrew's, right now she looked a lot like her mother. "Mam! What has happened to me?"

"Naomi, here. Look in the mirror," her grandmother answered instead, producing a hand mirror out of her handbag. "Be a dear?"

Her granddaughter looked and froze. "Mam! What has happened to me?"

Melinda opened her mouth, closed it, repeated it several times and actually looked around for support. Surprisingly (or not so much), her gaze landed upon director Coulson.  
"Tell me, Miss May," the man said in his most professional tone of voice. "Do you recognize any of these crests and mottos?" he produced several sheets of paper out of his own folder.

"Yes, I recognize the one on the left," Naomi nodded. "It's for a medical research center, called Green Branches. Dad was a psychological consultant for them as far as I can remember. They were associated with S.H.I.E.L.D."

"That is correct," Melinda nodded and turned to face the director herself. "Phil, Fury used Green Branches to help you recover after the Battle of New York-"

"In other words, this is the same mess that we've just gone through - with Bob, and Ahab, and the others," Hunter shook his head. 

"Nuh-uh," Skye said firmly. "I checked out the license plate numbers of the Saab, the Audi and the other cars - they are firmly affiliated with ATCU. This is a different mess than the one that we've just gone through."

"Um, mam? What are your friends arguing about?" Naomi blinked.

"Nothing, dear, just a case," Melinda exhaled, but then seemed to change her mind some. "Naomi, what is the last thing you remember?"

"Dad is having some of his friends over. I think that they were your coworkers, mam - from S.H.I.E.L.D. ...this place, I guess," Naomi frowned as she thought this over. "And then...it all becomes a blur. Just walls, empty grey walls and glass. Some people - empty grey people with eyes like glass. And then - some stranger, younger than the director over there, looking down in me in horror, saying something like 'What have they done to you?' And then...I go into a sleep, a real sleep, and then I wake up, and I'm here, and you're here, and Grand and Grandad are here..." Naomi began to shake.

"And that's enough for the moment," Bobbi spoke in a very professional tone of voice. "Melinda, sir and madam?" she turned to the older generations. "Naomi needs rest for now, and some warm turkey soup."

"Turkey, not chicken?"

"We're fresh out of chicken," Bobbi confessed. "Budget cuts, cough. We got turkey and some goose, actually, as far as fowl goes. No chicken."

There was a pause as Naomi's grandparents gave Coulson a very unimpressed look. "I'll go and rework our budget," the latter said with a sigh.

"No, Phil - we will," Naomi's grandmother said firmly. "Give us the paperwork."

Coulson opened his mouth.

"Don't argue, Phil," Melinda appeared to be very interested in some lint on her sleeve. "When they're in this mood...it's impossible to argue..."

Phil exhaled, gave Melinda a sharp look, and complied.

_TBC_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'Tiankong Chuju' really does mean 'Sky Daisy' in Chinese. Lol.


	5. Chapter 1.5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The agents try to have a quiet team dinner. It doesn't quite work, and the broken stove isn't helping any, either.

...As it turned out, the budget cuts mentioned by Bobbi involved not only food resources per se, but also plenty of secondary S.H.I.E.L.D. equipment, such as the one used in the kitchen: the stove that Bobbi had designed to make soup upon decisively refused to work. But Bobbi wouldn't be Bobbi if she didn't have a plan B.

"Say, big guy," she said with an ingratiating smile to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s new ally, "would you like to help out? For old times' sake?"

"No, Bobbi, no trips down the memory lane, not now," the latter rumbled softly. "Your man is already unhappy, I see. Now, what does the recipy call for?"

Bobbi looked over her shoulder at Lance, who seemed less unhappy and more angry (much angrier than when Skye and May had left him and the other man in the car) at her, and folded by telling Hudima just what did the recipy call for on this occassion. The big gifted nodded. His hands lit up and he began to patiently cook the soup for the team's dinner for tonight.

Silence stretched, as no one, not even Mack, (who was busy with the ribs in the oven), or Fitz (who was helping Skye with the salad - it wasn't his turn for kitchen duty, but he decided to volunteer all the same), wanted to break it, apparently. Skye, who never liked silence anyways, (she may've been trained by May, but some things were always going different between the two of them), decided to break it.

"So, Lance, what are we missing here?" she asked, pointing at the ex-mercenary's (ex?) wife and the new arrival. "Who's Mason?"

"My son," Bobbi answered instead with ice that would impress even Melinda May. "Lance's son too, or so I thought."

"Excuse me?" Skye blinked. "Lance is a pretty unforgetable guy. He is either there or he isn't."

"You don't get it," Lance Hunter didn't sound much like himself either, not at the moment. "Bobbi had a son - but not from me, or by me, or whatever the term is. For a while I thought that it was Grant Ward's actually - but he isn't the father either."

"You're the mother of Ward's son?!" Skye's eyes bulged in her sockets. "And you didn't tell us?"

"You're not listening," Hunter said with disgust. "Ward isn't Mason's father; I don't know who it is, but apparently while she was telling me that Mason is Ward's, she was telling the others that Mason is actually mine. He is neither." He sat down, visibly deflated.

"Oh," Fitz's genuis intellect helped him to come through first this time around too. "That's different, I guess. So who is the father?"

"Does it matter?" the big gifted rumbled, startling the small Scottsman. "A marriage is like a painting on the wall - it is either there or not. If you love her, you'll make it work, a stepson or not. If not - then not. Don't drag the boy into this."

Lance gave the bigger man a glare. "Well aren't you philosophical."

"I tried to have relationships before - they didn't work. It was my fault - my old man was multitalented, but not when it came to women," Hudima shrugged. "Besides, don't try to drag me into this mess: she married you, she loves you - not me."

Lance looked askance. "That's what I used to think too. Now, I wonder if she just wants a father for her child. She's a she-demon, you know?"

"Yes, and I'm a genetic throwback," Hudima shrugged. "My alien DNA comes from aliens called the Skrulls. Here on Earth they were known as the Rakshasa or green demons. They fought blue-skinned gods - the Kree. My point-"

"Wait, what?" Skye couldn't help but ask. "Did you say Kree? Some of the aliens we encountered are called the Kree."

"Ok, and?" Hudima shrugged. "Most people in Li Shi are descended from the Skrulls and the Kree. The two alien races are closely related, but would rather interact with humans than with each other." He paused. "Of course, your mother's lineage - going for the last 1000 years or so - just may be from some other alien race, while your father is your father." He paused and looked askance at Skye. "I didn't have to deal with Cal much, and I don't exactly like him, but if Garner goes after him...he is your father. Did you think about that?"

Skye blanched and opened her mouth to admit that no, she did not, when Mack spoke for the first time since the whole mess with May's family began.

"Well, we actually do have several agents observing Cal, keeping tabs on him - discreetly," the Afro-American man rumbled. "But thank you for asking. The ribs are ready."

There was a pause, as everyone looked at Mackenzie. "Are you ok?" Fitz asked quietly the older man.

"No, I mean yes, I mean - she and Phil, they're together, aren't they?" the latter replied, clearly unhappy himself.

There was a pause as the others blinked at this sudden change in topic. "You love May, don't you?" Skye asked softly her friend (and video-game partner). 

"I don't know," Mack shook his head. "I like the idea of children, you know? I just...can't have any."

"My old man had the same problem for the last few years of his life. It broke him," Hudima agreed. 

"I feel his pain," Mack shrugged. "But what can you do?"

"He can try to revitalize your cells," Bobbi replied instead. "He isn't just a walking bonfire, you know? It isn't exactly fire, you know? It's more like energy that manifests visibly as fire...it's an alien biology thing, you know?"

"No," Mack said flatly. "How it works?"

Hudima groaned. One of his fingers lit up with a flame...only it wasn't a flame per se, more of a warm light that made Skye feel tingly for one...

"What did I miss?" Melinda spoke suddenly, startling everyone - hence the reaction that followed...

"Mack cannot have kids," Hunter said.

"Morse only married Hunter so that her boy would have a father," Mack snapped back.

"Hudima here is an alien throwback of some sort," Morse deflected.

"Chuju over there is like a Jedi - her powers come from her mind, the embodiment of pure willpower," Hudima shrugged, extinguishing his flame.

"Uh, Fitz over there, next to you, needs a hug?" Skye suggested.

May blinked, muttered something under her breath about being out of the loop for just an hour and gave Fitz a hug. "Thanks for helping Bobbi with Naomi," she said quietly.

"Don't mention it," Fitz replied equally quietly. "We're never getting Jemma back, are we? I was working on burrowed time all this time - sorry for repetition - and now it ran out. The team - S.H.I.E.L.D. - needs my help."

"Fitz, we'll help you get Jemma back," Skye said softly, but Fitz refused to be consoled. 

"Skye, thanks, but let's be honest here - we got our next big case to deal with here, so Jemma will have to go onto the back burner, metaphorically speaking... What are we dealing with here, BTW?"

"Leo, did Jemma ever talk to you about the Green Branches research facility?" Melinda asked gently.

Leo blinked and grew noticeably more thoughtful than before. (Before he had been only morose instead.) "You know something? I've heard of this place. Shall we go and speak to director Coulson?"

Melinda nodded in agreement. 

_TBC_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a bit of R&R for the team...


	6. Chapter 1.6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The agents hold an information session; sadly, it leads to more questions than answers in an already tense time...

"Director Coulson?" Fitz did a very good attempt to sound professional, actually. "What about Green Branches?"

Coulson didn't miss a beat; the fact that for the moment May's biological family was out of the shot helped. 

"It is a branch of S.H.I.E.L.D.," he replied in an even more professional voice. "It was associated with your part of the Academy - sci and tech."

"That is correct," Fitz nodded, while utilizing the same matter of fact tone. "It was located in West Virgina - still is, rather, if you want to get technical. It was one of the more fortified and better hidden S.H.I.E.L.D. locations - not quite up to Fridge's standards, but close. It was doing primarily medical research - biological too. There were secondary sites around the world - Guest House, for example, though it was more of a supply depot, actually - but Green Branches was perhaps the most important, most main one. Agent Weaver was planning on having Jemma work there after we graduate - they don't really need engineers there, not as much as they need biochemists, for example - but Jemma had outmaneuvered her somehow, or done something, and went off to work in the field - alongside me. Yay." He paused, took a deep breath, and continued: "So why are you asking?"

"Andrew Garner seems to have contacts there," Coulson replied carefully. Something was off with Fitz - well, something was off ever since Jemma Simmons was taken, but now the 'off' part was different. 

"So?" Leo frowned in thought and looked like his old self once more, however briefly. "Isn't he May's husband? I mean, isn't it normal that he is associated with some of us?"

"This is just the problem," Melinda spoke from behind Fitz, startling him, before he still was nowhere near her league. "He wasn't. He was always quite anti-S.H.I.E.L.D., always taking an effort not to be associated with the agency too closely. And now, well - but you don't know about Naomi too much, do you?"

Leo shook his head. "I know that she's your daughter - that makes her Andrew's daughter too, right?"

"Yes," Melinda nodded.

"So, is, or was your daughter a cadet too-"

"No, she's a civilian," Melinda shook her head. "After Bahrain... never mind." She stopped, obviously thinking about something. "Leo, are you ok?" she finally settled on an appropriate topic.

"No, I am not," Leo's voice actually sounded similar to Melinda's default setting, (so to speak). "Jemma is gone, my happiness is gone, and your family is in trouble. Of course I am not ok. Can't you figure it out?" He paused, realized that he had snapped at the Cavalry out of all people, and tried to back-peddle - sort of. "I didn't mean to do that?"

"Of course you didn't," Morse agreed, as she framed by the others (except for Skye), appeared from behind May. "Now, uh, director Coulson? Skye is back in regards to locating Green Branches."

"I, we already know where it is - it's part of our organization," Coulson pointed, not unreasonably. 

"Yeah, and not unlike Cybertek it is self-contained," Skye popped out of the nearby office. "Fortunately, it is still detectable by satellites-"

"You hacked U.S. satellites?" Coulson stared. 

"Well, they were someone's satellites," Skye admitted. "I'm not sure if they're American or not."

"It doesn't matter - ever since the deal with Christian Ward had fallen through, we're still very unpopular with the U.S. politicians," May shrugged.

"And why would you want to deal with career politicians at any rate? Please don't misunderstand me," Hudima rumbled, "but I thought that S.H.I.E.L.D. generally shyed away from dealing with non-human entities?"

"...I see that you have a very dim view of politics and politicians," Coulson said after an awkward pause. "Did you reach it on your own or did you talk to Hunter?"

"I did talk to Hunter but not about that," Hudima shrugged. "Should I have?"

"Guys, come on! Why is everyone so slow today?" Skye said grouchily.

"Sorry; it's as if the big computer that keeps us all running as computer characters should be run is being slightly on the fritz," Hunter shot back. "Anyhow, what did you discover?"

"Not what, who," Skye said, grouchily. "Ward. Keep in mind, this is few weeks old, and the footage is black-and-white and not very good - but this is the best that I could find, period. The rest of the footage is just as bad and not as interesting, except for one more piece..." 

She played the footage with Ward first. The man was standing outside Green Branches' main perimeter, but clearly unbothered by anyone. His stance was tense and worried, but he is clearly unbothered all the same. 

Several people, dressed as orderlies, appeared on the scene, driving (for the lack of a better term) a wheelchair with a person on it. The satellite footage was of a bad quality, but the people could see that the person in the wheelchair was in a very bad shape - forget Lindsey Lohan, this was far worse. 

Ward, unexpectedly, seemed to agree. He gave the person a long stare, and then gave the orderlies a longer one. The footage wasn't very good, but the people - and there was something wrong with their general body shapes, BTW - clearly didn't enjoy being the objects of his attention and fled with as much dignity as they could have (which wasn't much). Ward turned to the person in the wheelchair, apparently muttered something (the footage didn't have any audio, to make things worse) and drove her/him away.

"That's it," Skye said apologetically to May.

"Was this Naomi before he passed her onto me? It is her - it's the same wheelchair, and it just is her, you know?"

"May," Skye began to speak, but was interrupted by Bobbi:

"Of course it is her! We checked the bloodwork, the DNA markers, everything matched - unless she has a sister, of course-"

"She doesn't," May shook her head, ruefully. "Andrew never wanted a big family, and I...well, I was undecided."

"And now you have a big family - us," Bobbi said firmly, "and as for Naomi, well...you told me about Garrett; it sounds to me as if Ward had been taking care of Garrett for years; he may not be an MD, but he knows a thing or two about taking care of people and medicine."

"Ward cannot, he cannot, he is just a monster, a killer!" Fitz sputtered. "He cannot be more, he just can't!"

"Is he your ex-boyfriend?" came the question from S.H.I.E.L.D.'s newest ally. 

Fitz gave the bigger man a look. "No. He was just my friend - our friend, or so we thought. Then he chose Garrett over us. Idiot."

"Is this why you didn't kill him after you won? 'Cause he's an idiot?"

"No, we didn't kill 'cause we were the idiots," May shook her head. "We really should've either killed him or made some sort of a deal with him the first time around - instead we just kept him in legal limbo, until we tried to pass him onto his family. It didn't work, and then Bobbi got hurt-"

"Hey, keep me out of it, I got better," Bobbi said firmly. "And speaking of passing - Skye, did you see Garner too?"

"Yes," Skye muttered, her own mood gone bad, "this is much more recent - I think it was about the same time when we were experiencing the car chase, see?" she fast-forwarded the satellite footage, revealing Andrew Garner walking forwards in a brisk pace, his own mood clearly stormy.

"What's with the coat and hat? Who does he think he is? Jesse James or Al Capone?" Fitz couldn't help but ask.

"I have no idea," Melinda admitted. "Andrew had always weird tastes in culture."

"And you lived with him why?" Coulson asked, askance.

Melinda gave the director a look. So did the others, but hers was special. However, before she could say anything, the scene on the screen changed, Andrew changed: he took off his coat and hat to a nearby orderly (perhaps one of the same ones who handed Naomi to Grant) and shifted with a look of great rage on his face into Lash. And as he stood there, smoke curling from his hands, a woman approached him, roughly of May's age, but with a slightly more delicate build. She stood in front of the man turned InHuman without any fear; she gently talked to him and the man - Garner or Lash, whatever his name was - calmed down, put the head back onto his head, draped the coat over his forearm, and went inside after the woman.

"...We've seen this woman before," Coulson said simply. "She's the head of ATCU-"

"So, your husband is Lash," Skye drummed her fingers and looked for her tablet, but Bobbi was working furiously on it, (which was odd - Bobbi usually left this sort of thing to Skye). "Shouldn't, uh, Naomi have something from his side of the family?" she paused. "Ok, she already does. But-"

"Skye, you don't understand," Bobbi passed the tablet over to Coulson and May. "I know now what Garner and the ATCU, and whoever is running Green Branches now are up to. Lash - he isn't like you or Hudima, for example. He is more like captain Rogers - or Dr. Banner, to be more precise." And as the others just stared at her in surprise, Bobbi took a deep breath and continued.

_TBC_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yes, I know that this is an AU take on Lash's origin, but it still works, you'll see.


	7. Chapter 1.7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The agents are beginning to figure out some of their new troubles, but they still have a long way to go, yet.

"Ok, where to start?" Bobbi looked even more unsure than she did before. "It all started, I guess, with the secret-soldier formula of captain Rogers'. As my S.O. had explained, the attempts to recreate it never stopped. Banner tried it with gamma radiation - and got turned into the Hulk in the process; the U.S. military is still working in this direction. S.H.I.E.L.D., or SSR, if you want to get technical, tried to do it with biology - or biochemistry - or just chemistry, and it was a different disaster altogether."

"The Hulk isn't a disaster," Skye said fiercely, with some of her old, pre-S.H.I.E.L.D. days' fire resonating in her voice.

"Not according to the U.S. military," Bobbi said wryly, sounding more like her old self too, however briefly. "But my point is that S.H.I.E.L.D. never had any better luck with recreating the original formula either. Lash...Dr. Garner...he's a volunteer, or one of the volunteers, in this program. Agent Hand...my S.O. ... she used to talk about this at length..."

"Well, Lash does look a bit like the Hulk...but he also looks slightly like the big guy over there," Skye shrugged, as she pointed to the other InHuman present in the room. "Is he," she pointed to Hudima, "also part of the project?"

"No, I think that he's the other way around," Lance spoke up suddenly. "Before we teamed-up with you, before Izzy and the others were killed by Creel, we heard of this Green Branches place - by hearsay. It was greatly involved in hiring and acquiring volunteers for medical testing - specific, particular volunteers. They were trying to use gifted, alien, InHuman DNA as their take on the supersoldier formula, weren't they?"

"...This isn't S.H.I.E.L.D.," Skye's face was white. "They-"

"Were taken over, infiltrated by Hydra for the last few years, who is like this," Hudima said gently. "I'm guessing that Hydra is still keeping the Green Branches part of S.H.I.E.L.D., doesn't it?"

There was a pause as Coulson was thinking, and thinking hard. "It doesn't add up completely," he finally reached a decision. "Let's not forget - Fury was involved. He was involved with the GH formula. He wasn't Hydra. He was S.H.I.E.L.D. John Garrett was Hydra. He didn't know about it - hence the whole fallout with the Clairvoyant and Raina and Ward and the others."

"Sir, agent Hand - she wasn't Hydra either. But she was probably in the know that something was wrong with S.H.I.E.L.D., or perhaps she was just in the know. She just thought that she could handle it," Bobbi said bitterly.

"And now, according to Lance, she's in Australia, apparently retired but still alive," Skye finished flatly: even the rumors of Hand's apparent demise didn't make Skye like the older woman any more, and when Hunter admitted that she was alive and well, Skye's feelings towards Hand fell even lower than they were initially (very low). 

"What?!" Bobbi's eyes bulged as if someone has stabbed in the stomach. "She what?"

"Alive," Skye replied, sounding slightly shaken. "Lance told us that: me, and Hudima, and May, while we were going for Gardner-"

Bobbi stared into nothingness. "She's alive...and she didn't tell me...she was my S.O., she gave me everything, she and I...we were...I only stayed because...for her memory's sake, and she's alive." She shifted, looked at the big gifted and spat something in a foreign language. Hudima nodded and replied back - evenly, in the same language. Bobbi blinked, began to count on her fingers, blinked again, paused and grew silently thoughtful, before replying - still in the same language. Hudima replied, Bobbi nodded-

"Excuse me, but for those of us who don't know the super-secret alien language what are you two talking about?" Hunter lost patience first.

"What are you talking about? This is Sanskrit; it is no more a super-secret alien language than British English is," Bobbi looked at her husband at last.

"You know Sanskrit?" May blinked.

"I know Sanskrit, Mandarin, Mongol Khel and Greek; I know plenty of Native American and Native African languages too, including Wakandan," Bobbi told the older woman. "Grant Ward wasn't the only custom-made job in S.H.I.E.L.D., you know?"

"Grant Ward was also a traitor," May said coldly.

"He also got you your daughter back-"

"Point," May blinked, startling everyone. "But we'll worry about Grant Ward - and you - when the need arises. Now what about Green Branches?"

"What about them?" Coulson spoke up, startling everyone. "It would be nice to say that Hydra is all behind them, behind this whole mess, but May is right. It doesn't fully feel like them. There's something else."

"Yes," Hudima nodded solemnly. "Lately Green Branches has changed their approach. Now they got Lash going around the world and killing people - people from Li Shi. People from Li Shi want to talk to you, sir, the director of S.H.I.E.L.D., regarding this situation. They have deputized me to kill this bloody troll, but they would like to make a deal with S.H.I.E.L.D. too. Maybe you can find time to visit them before it is too late?"

There was a pause as the agents thought this over. 

"They want to talk to me? Not to Skye - I mean Daisy - I mean-?" Coulson finally spoke.

"Yes. They aren't stupid sir - we aren't stupid. They know that it was Jiaying who started the bloodbath - not you. They want to smooth things over, especially now, with Lash appearing on the scene, backed by Hydra or someone else." Hudima paused and looked over at Skye with a very guilty and apologetic look. "They also rather not have Jiaying's heir back - ever heard the saying about the live dog and the dead lion? Well, agent Chuju over here is the live lion of the saying and the people back in Li Shi are worried that she will take over and continue what her mother, grandmother, and other ancestors have done."

"Really?" Skye blinked. "What did they do?"

"Rule over Li Shi with an iron glove - and a sharp glaive?"

"What's a glaive?"

"It's like a spear, or even a lance, it isn't used on horseback, but on foot - it's more like the Japanese naginata, really," Lance explained to the startled InHuman woman. "What? I'm more than just a pretty face, you know?"

"True, Bobbi said that you have a magical penis too," Hudima agreed dryly. "Hence the interest in spears?"

"...How 'bout I won't interfere in your courting of 'Chuju' if you don't interfere with my love life?" Lance said with nary a beat. "A simple mind your own business would've worked too."

"I'm not courting anyone," Hudima turned brown. "Are you courting anyone?"

Lance, surprisingly, laughed. "Now this is what I'm talking about - proper manly interaction. Mack has once handcuffed me into a closet for too long, and Fitz isn't ready for this sort of thing. Glad to meet you, buddy!"

"Ok," Hudima nodded cautiously, before switching his attention back to Coulson. "Sir?"

"Ok. Skye - I mean Daisy-"

"Just call me Skye, sir," the InHuman agent said half-thoughtfully and half-wearily. 

"Great!" Coulson said with clear relief. "Anyways, let's split - May and I will go to Li Shi and see what do they want from us, you and your team - you're in charge - will go to Green Branches and see once and for all what are they up to, and Mack is in charge of HQ, since it's his turn. Does anyone object?"

No one objected, not even Mack, (who didn't look very happy with this development), so the meeting was adjourned.

_TBC_


	8. Chapter 1.8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The infiltration of Green Branches begins, while Coulson meets Raina down in Li Shi.

Lance Hunter wasn't sure as to what to make of their new friend even now. Maybe 'friend' was a bit too much to use, but 'enemy' wasn't a proper word to use either. He was certainly friendly enough to all of them, especially to Skye (or Daisy), but, well, Skye (or Daisy) hersef was lately subdued - and the big man clearly wasn't the sort of man to talk just because - unlike Lance himself. 

Or Bobbi, but Lance had to admit that when it came to his not-quite-ex-wife, recently she wasn't very chatty herself - or Lance himself was, for that matter.

Mason, Bobbi's son... Bobbi didn't deny that he wasn't Lance's (he didn't look anything like Lance - he looked like Bobbi's son...from someone else), but that wasn't the point, not before and not now. Right now it was about the fact that she had lied to him, lied needlessly and pointedlessly - did it really matter just who the father was? (It wasn't Coulson, that's for sure.)

As for Ward himself...the man was an arse, but for a while now Hunter was confident that the man was also used regardless of this quality - wouldn't it have been better (including not just Bobbi, but everyone else, on all of the sides?) if the man just stayed in Mexico with his girlfriend and had a family - the end? Wasn't it what Coulson planned on doing to him afterwards in the first place? But no - first they get him in, then they don't want him...they were lucky that only Bobbi got hurt...and only agent 33 got killed...

Lance shook his head. He planned on going after Ward, planned on getting May to come along with him, but for now, apparently, Ward was off the hook - again, or rather - he was shelved for something more important...and because he had proven to be useful once more. 

This was actually something that Hunter had a problem with - when an enemy is useful, they are no longer an enemy, are they? But if someone is an enemy then they cannot be useful, not really, so yeah, it's an oxymoron.

"What are you thinking about?" Bobbi decided to break the silence.

"All over the place," Hunter replied crossly. "Mostly about S.H.I.E.L.D., but also us - where are we going? I love you, Bob, but do you feel the same?"

"Lance," Bobbi visibly drooped, "how can you say that? I mean, we're in sewers, infiltrating yet another secret base, there are mutant rats stalking us, some sort of zombie alligators too, and you're not concentrating?"

"There's an opening just above us," Lance shrugged. "Hey, big guy, care to give us a boost?"

"Chuju here has a different idea," the InHuman man replied as he and Skye joined Lance and Bobbi. "Ready to vibrate?"

Before Lance could reply either for or against the idea, Skye had already joined them - and they were off.

///

As Melinda landed the quinnjet, Coulson surveyed the rebuilding settlement of Li Shi with a blank look of his own. The little (smallish) settlement was recovering from the face-off between Jiaying, her forces, and S.H.I.E.L.D. There were new buildings - some of them still under construction - and there were new streets, new pavements, new people...some of whom didn't look too InHuman to begin with - but most of them were giving S.H.I.E.L.D.'s plane a wide berth - not so much scared, but wary or even cautious. Overall, this wasn't as bad as what Coulson had feared; in fact, given the honest curiosity on the faces of some of the local children, he and S.H.I.E.L.D. could work with this...provided that their goals were matching and that Hudima was speaking the truth.

Hudima...Coulson wasn't sure what to make of him. The big man was clearly wary of the S.H.I.E.L.D. director himself, and while he was forthcoming, he didn't deny holding back some information from Coulson and the others either - or at least this was the feeling that Coulson got from him... but this was the issue when it came to gifted people, period: they just distrusted the agency, and Coulson, for one, wasn't sure that they (i.e. S.H.I.E.L.D.) could change that. For a while, Skye's family situation seemed something like a godsend, an in into the gifted community, but then Jiaying turned it around into a nightmare. Coulson would never admit it, but this act had hurt him - and his people - even worse than John Garrett and the rest of Hydra had: at least Hydra were just a pack of delusional madmen; Jiaying and her people didn't have that excuse, period. Hudima's revelation came far too late, but it also hurt: the idea that S.H.I.E.L.D.'s latest disaster had been caused by its' own past actions was an insult on top of an injury...

"Ah, director Coulson," Raina spoke up, startling Coulson out of his revelry. "It's so good to see that you've made it - and so soon."

"Yes, well, your friend did take his time - but we had good reason; we don't have too much spare time in S.H.I.E.L.D. to spare..." Coulson face-palmed as he realized that he was rambling (and May had elbowed him, too). "Can we try this again? We're very pleased at our end that you want to try again, but - why? For years your people existed independently from the rest of the world-"

"No, not really," Raina shook her head. "Jiaying tried to minimize it, apparently, but she did have mental issues - and I got the scar to prove it. Good thing that my anatomy had changed in the temple, otherwise I would be dead."

"Is that a joke?" Fitz poked from behind Coulson (the director wasn't a big man, but Fitz was even shorter, let's be fair here). "Because it isn't very funny."

"Agreed, and being at the pointy end of the punchline is even less humorous," Raina flashed her teeth before revealing the scar on her neck. "Where's your partner, agent Fitz?"

"This is why I am here," Fitz continued, ignoring Coulson (and May). "Do your people know about this Monolith? It, uh, ate Jemma-"

"Really?" Raina grew genuinely thoughtful. "I think I have some idea. But before we begin to do any favors to each other, maybe we should get down with the papers? The council of elders - myself included - would like something concrete." She honestly looked very apologetic here.

"Of course," Coulson said blankly, "but - why? Make no mistake, we're greatful, but-"

"Let's be fair, sir - S.H.I.E.L.D. is the devil we know and can trust, at least to a point, unlike agent Brand and her people," Raina grimaced. "There are rumors that Hydra is planning something big - like selling the entire Earth to some alien overlord or something. We don't like it. Yes, we got alien DNA in us, but we're no aliens, and with Hydra's major stronghold not too far away from us in Japan, we're really looking for allies."

"And you thought of us? I'm touched," Coulson looked askance, "but - did you say agent Brand?"

"Agent Angela Brand, yes," Raina nodded solemnly. "She's looking for new recruits for her so-called S.W.O.R.D. outfit, including us. Sir, we're mostly civilians here, so we're not overly excited or enthused by her offer."

"Interesting," Coulson grew genuinely thoughtful. "I remember her - she was a hard woman, though not an unreasonable one. Raina, why don't we begin on working out this deal of yours, shall we?"

"My thoughts exactly," Raina nodded in agreement.

_TBC_


	9. Chapter 1.9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The infiltration doesn't go as planned; meanwhile, May and Leo try to bond.

The next corridor they had found themselves in was, well, a proper corridor rather than some sort of a sewer (and not even a glorified one - just a sewer). The floor was dry, as were the walls and the ceiling - in fact, the whole atmosphere felt dry, like some sort of a cellar or an attic, save that it wasn't cold or cool - just dry. The fact that there were no people that weren't captive helped too.

No, seriously, there wasn't anyone in the corridors - apparently, most of the 'Green Branches' staff already left, and security didn't come here very often either - apparently they made the other personnel nervous and interfered with their concentration. There weren't even any video cameras, as far as any of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents present here could detect.

They had already explored several rooms before reaching this level, and until the last room, they hadn't discovered anything particularly incriminating. And then there was the odd room out - not a proper lab, but more a break room, which for some reason raised everyone's hackles. It was warm and comfortable, with a huge soft Bukhara carpet lying all over the floor. There were armchairs and sofas everywhere, as well as cocktail tables and lamp tables - and the lamps too had an oriental look and feel to them, they clearly weren't bought in a convenience store. There was a bookcase, albeit filled with journals...that were sorted according to their topics, (all related to biology but different), and according to Bobbi, only a select few scientists could properly understand what was in them. A fridge, a stainless steel sink and an electrical stove with all the accessories, (enabling people to prepare a full dinner here) completed the scene.

Lance and the others looked around, noticed a polished wooden oval table and 8 chairs from the matching set and weren't impressed.

"Looks as innocent as Bobbi's butt," the Englishman noted.

...While he and Bobbi went at it again, Skye began to investigate - they were missing something here, she was sure of it. Garner and his allies wouldn't be hiding important documents at home, or at a safety deposit box in a bank - even they weren't that amateurish. It was quite likely that they would hide them someplace like here, but where exactly? Not behind a fridge, under the carpet, in the walls - people look at those places first.

Beckoning Hudima to follow her, Skye walked to the bookcase and began to remove the journals. For a while their search proved fruitless, but at the end of the second shelf they hit jackpot - the door of the safety deposit box. Skye could've blasted through it, but they were going for discreet here, so she and Hudima switched their positions with Lance and Bobbi and let them break the combination lock, while the two InHumans kept watch.

...It took just under 5 minutes for the Brits to break the combo. Lance claimed that they could've done it quicker, but didn't want to rush the job. Everyone made vaguely believable noises at his statement and started looking through the paperwork. The photos especially were very...vivid - so vivid, that only Hudima's grip prevented Skye from going full quake on this compound, so instead they went to the appropriate level to look at the evidence and to start a rescue mission - and so here they now were, in this cold and featureless - so very different from the break room - corridor. 

On the sides of the corridor were windows/doors, which opened into small enclosures - cells, really, not unlike S.H.I.E.L.D.'s containment units, save that they're immobile, and are designed as the more traditional prison cells that they are. 

Skye looked around - and caught the eyes of the prisoner in the last (or the first?) of the enclosures in the corridor: "Lincoln?!" she stared and frantically looked at the others. "I don't know what he's doing here...we must get him out..."

"Well, you've handled the giant mutant rats in the sewer when I couldn't - not without setting the entire tunnel aflame due to sewer gas," Hudima rumbled, as he put his hands on the glass - and they glowed yellow-red, and the glass...vaporized, like common paper from a candle's flame. "Done?"

"Daisy?" Lincoln gets onto his feet and in a shaky, but steady, manner gets across the now-unlocked cell to the foursome. "It's you! And I remember you! You're the big man who rescued me back then-"

"Yes, yes," Lance said quickly, startling the InHuman trio. "How did you get here?"

"Oh, uh, it's complex - we need to bust the other InHumans trapped on this level - any ideas?" Lincoln turned to the Englishman. 

"Do I?" Lance said rhetorically, before pulling out a medium-sized semi-collapsable crowbar (S.H.I.E.L.D. had inventions of this sort too) and slammed it right through the nearest conventionally-located control mini-panel that he had noticed earlier. There was a small explosition, an equally small electric discharge, (Lance was wearing rubber-insulated gloves that he had put on for just such an emergency, so he wasn't electrocuted), an electric fire was an follow-up, and all of the electronics in the corridor collapsed, releasing the InHumans from their cells. 

Sadly, this sort of thing didn't pass without incident, as alarms began to blare almost immediately; the sprinklers too go off, as there's plenty of smoke in the air, but only emergency lights remain on, so the atmosphere is quite murky and confusing, so-

"Everyone!" Bobbi yelled from the top of her lungs, which were considerable - just look at her chest, cough. "Follow Lincoln! He's the one with the main plot as to where, and how, you are to escape!"

The exodus went in mass.

///

"May, what are you thinking about?" Leo asked shyly the woman in question. (Shyly because he had sort of drifted apart from his former Bus teammate and the two of them never got together to begin with, due to all the differences between the two of them).

"Nothing."

"...Say what?"

"I'm not thinking of anything," May explained with a sign, clearly trying to figure out how to tell Fitz to get lost without actually saying this directly. "I'm just enjoying the view. Can't you do that?"

"No," the small (in stature) scientist admitted. "I cannot. I'm constantly thinking, even when...even after I'd recovered from my near-death experience by being thrown off the plane. I cannot...I can't just switch my brain off and enjoy the beauties of nature like you do; I'm sorry."

May looked down at the other agent. (Physically, it wasn't easy, but she managed.) "Areyou trying to insult me?" she finally spoke, but without any real malice behind her words."

"No," Fitz paled, because May was May, even to her friends. "I'm trying to compliment you; I'm sorry if I got it wrong-"

"All right, this is what I suspected," Melinda let Leo off the hook. "So, what are you thinking about?"

"Jemma," Leo visibly dropped. "And - your family. What's that like? My parents died in a car accident when I was 4; I'd been raised by my aunt and uncle until I went to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s academy. They're not bad people; they just weren't my parents, and we all knew it. My uncle, in particular, was upset that I went into S.H.I.E.L.D. and sciences, not politics as he did, so we didn't really stay in touch even before the Hydra uprising and now..." Leo shook his head. "You, the director, the others - you're more of a family to me than my aunt and uncle are, see?"

"Not sure," May shook her head. "For the last 7 years of my life I tried to do what you're supposedly are trying to do - to cut off all the roots from the civilian aspects of my life. As you've seen, this has backfired on me very badly - maybe even on the rest of us. Naomi, physically, is going to be fine - but otherwise? She lost about 6 years of her life while in a drug-induced coma." She paused and gave Leo a look. "And you've got issues with that?"

"You know that it isn't your family I got issues with," Leo refused to be baited. "It's just, well just, you know what I got issues with, or rather - with whom. Your family has no issues, though how are you going to go with them from here?"

"That is the tricky question," May exhaled. "I don't know. I want to help Naomi, I don't want her in S.H.I.E.L.D., I know that it is too late for that, I, Leo Fitz, I am sca-"  
It was then that Raina and Coulson emerged. 

"Melinda, Fitz," Coulson said calmly. "Apparently Raina got some friends landing here in their airport."

"Not friends - some fellow InHumans," Raina shook her head. "Want to come and see them?"

And this was what Coulson and the others did. Seeing Daisy and their fellow agents emerge from clearly not a S.H.I.E.L.D. plane was a surprise of its own; but the biggest surprise wasn't them or Campbell emerging from the aircraft; it was Ian Quinn.

_TBC_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, what is Quinn up to these days?


	10. Chapter 1.10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some questions are answered, but a few still remain...

To say that Skye was unhappy to see Ian Quinn once more in her life would be an understatement - she just gave him her best glare and did her best not to blast him into pieces with her vibrations. Considering that he went very pale as soon as he saw her, it worked. 

"You know him?" Lance neutrally asked as the rest of the party (except for the rescuees, who kind of got out of the way) kind of moved between the two of them.

"Yeah. He was one of Garrett's little conspiracy," Skye gave Quinn another glare, but with a more sullen anger than the glare efore this. "Alongside Ward and Raina and the rest of the Hydra stooges." She paused. "So what are you doing here, playing hero?"

"After you killed Garrett and the rest of his outfit back in New Mexico, I managed to get away," Quinn shrugged. "A head of Hydra named Gideon Malick found me and pulled me back in - not that I had a lot of choice in that matter. He had some very formidable agents doing the persuading for him, too."

"How formidable?" Skye said flatly.

"I went through them easily enough," Hudima rumbled. "Hydra - the old Hydra - has something of a specialist school back in Austria. Most of Malick's specialists came from there."

"And you went through them?" Skye sceptically asked the big InHuman.

"It was less than a dozen," came the reply, "and I have been trained for just such situations, as had agent Morse. If it'd been her, she'd go through them just as easily as I would...and so would you, I suspect, if you have access to your powers in this scenario."

"Hey, what about me?" Lance said acidly.

"I don't know - can you fight a dozen men on a regular basis?" Hudima asked directly.

"Well, no. I'm more of a subtle, trickster sort of guy," Lance admitted after some sort. "Anyways, where did you come in? I mean, why did you get involved?"

"Raina had a vision involving him," Hudima jabbed the finger at Quinn, "and asked me to help him so that he could help us so I helped. So far Quinn has been grateful, let's give him that."

"Useful too," Quinn gave the bigger man an askance look. 

"Yes. That," Hudima nodded and turned to Lincoln, who was actualy doing his best to be unobtrusive. "Didn't we meet before?"

"You remember, then?" Lincoln sounded rather strange. "It was, what - two years ago, three? There were those Secret Empire agents who tried to rouse the yetis; Jiaying sent me and Gordon to deal with them; it didn't go well..."

"And now Jiaying the sorceress is dead and her heir has been found," Hudima shrugged and pointed towards Skye. "I did not see this coming."

"Gordon's dead too," Lincoln said quietly. "S.H.I.E.L.D. - including Daisy's friends over there - killed him."

There was an awkward pause, which was broken, perhaps not very surprisingly, by Bobbi.

"That's unfair," she glared at Lincoln. "He was trying to kill us - well, Fitz, and Mack, and director Coulson. We feel sorry for your loss, but we did what we had to do."

"I know," Lincon said in the same tone of voice. "But, well, we're a peaceful people, a civilian people, we don't share your cavalier attitude towards life and death-"

"Excuse me? Cavalier?" Bobbi gave Lincoln a glare. "Just because we don't participate in great, big and visible displays of emotion-"

"Bobbi, stop," Skye said quietly - but Bobbi immediately fell silent as Skye switched her attention back to Lincoln. "You said that you were a civilian people," (by now Skye had enough S.H.I.E.L.D. experience to understand that 'peaceful' and 'civilian' were two different things), "but what were you doing just now?"

"Someone has to do the hard work," Lincoln didn't blink. "Hudima, Gordon, me - Alisha too, I suppose."

"But Alisha's with us..." Skye trailed away. "She's spying for you, isn't she?"

Lincoln very pointedly said nothing.

"We're not your enemy," Skye continued quietly, but instead of Lincoln, the older InHuman answered: 

"We know, I told you that, but we're not sure that you're our friends either. This is why your director went to talk to Raina to see where we stand in regards to each other," Hudima's gaze didn't waver. 

"And him?" Skye pointed to Quinn. "He's Hydra-"

"He wanted out, so I got him out, on Raina's request," Hudima shrugged. "And he is a good businessman, he is in charge of financial operations and they work - maybe because I can always provide the stick, but he does his part."

"And you don't care about Hydra...Wait," Lance shook his head. "You mentioned some sort of a secret empire earlier. How that fits in?"

Hudima blinked and exchanged a look with Bobbi Morse of all people. "Ah yes, that," he sounded kind of sheepish. "I've been meaning to tell you that if agent Morse didn't. According to her S.O., this is - agent Hand, after Captain America had defeated the Red Skull, and the Allies had defeated the Axis in WWII, some time after that, during the Cold War, the original Hydra split into three parts. One is AIM, which was mostly scientists, it was trounced so solidly by the Iron Man and his people few years ago that they are now busy licking their wounds and not getting involved in anything - not yet. The second one is Hydra itself, mostly politicians; captain America and the others - including you and the rest of S.H.I.E.L.D. - are dealing with it. And the third is the Secret Empire, mostly businessmen, which remains largely untouched-"

"You're dealing with it?" Skye asked softly. "You, and Bobbi Morse, and-"

Hudima chuckled - sadly, bitterly. "You want to tell them, Morse? Because I don't want to."

"Yeah," Bobbi didn't sound very happy herself. "Skye, Lincoln, look. Me and Hudima and the other people, who used to do agent Hand's job? We thought that we were doing something along the lines that you were thinking, but neither I nor he can vouchsafe for it, not anymore. I, for one, suspect that we might've been doing the Secret Empire's- Hydra's- jobs instead of S.H.I.E.L.D."

Skye froze. "But the one time I remember Victoria Hand give us a job - well, Ward and Fitz a job - was in South Ossetia, regarding some sort of a reactor..." she froze. "And we never learned what happened to it after, did we? And Grant, apparently, didn't kill Hand either. No wonder that my parents and the other InHumans don't trust us or differentiate us from Hydra with all of this double-dealing going on around!"

"Not true," Hudima said slowly. "You're thinking of the old S.H.I.E.L.D., Fury's S.H.I.E.L.D. You're a part of a new S.H.I.E.L.D. - Coulson's S.H.I.E.L.D., maybe yours too. The two organizations are different - aren't they, Morse?"

"Yes," Bobbi gave the bigger InHuman man an enigmatic look. "Yes it is, cough, Hudima."

"We're landing," Ian Quinn said suddenly, startling everyone. "Coffee?"

Skye gave Quinn a pointed look and walked to the jet's exit. She came outside - and there was Raina, looking at her with a less than welcoming gaze, and there was also Coulson - according to their plan, which didn't include her being here, actually, not right now.

Skye took a deep breath and gave a nonchalant wave to her boss (and May, and some distance away - Fitz also). 

"Hey, guys! We can explain!"

_TBC_


	11. Chapter 1.11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some problems get solved, some questions - answered.

And so it came to pass that the new InHumans got off the plane (owned by Quinn of all people - really), and began to be dispersed/acclimated in Li Shi, while Daisy quietly debriefed Coulson and May. Leo Fitz could've joined-in on the unorthodox debriefing, but... but for some reason he was distracted by the sight of Raina going on through some sort of a debriefing with Hudima as well. It's not that Leo didn't trust the big InHuman (or Raina) for that matter, it's just that... he didn't trust them completely, not entirely, not after the whole Hydra uprising and the InHuman mess, after which Leo stopped trusting anyone fully - and then there had been Jemma.

...Ok, this was a misrepresentation of things, but still, having been frustrated this time by an alien artefact and science, was really an insult on top of an injury. Were fate, universe and the Creator conspiring to keep him and Jemma apart? This wasn't fair, and he wasn't even Jewish!..

And then Hudima stopped talking to Raina and walked towards him - in a non-threatening manner, but since Leo was kind of nervous of the big InHuman already, this wasn't doing any miracles for his peace of mind either.

"I didn't go anywhere, didn't touch anything, didn't break anything!" Leo said quickly, as he showed-off his empty hands to the bigger man. "I don't know what Raina told you, but I'm innocent!" He paused and face-palmed. "Can I go over this, too?"

"Relax," Hudima sighed. "Before Raina got into this, she was like this - like you, so I'm not angry with you to begin with, especially if you didn't do anything here - you didn't do anything here, right?"

"Yes!" Leo said desperately. "Innocent, completely innocent, that is me!" He paused. "And what you were saying about Raina here?"

"Long story," Hudima pinched his nose, "she's something of a sister to me - the annoying, troublesome, sometimes crazy, not quite sister that is still closer to me than my own biological family were, but this isn't the point. I came over to say that Coulson told her about the Monolith, and she, apparently, has knowledge and ideas about it, and she thinks that she knows where your friend has ended-up at - what is the relationship between the two of you, anyhow?"

"That's a worthwhile question," Leo nodded, "since you barely know me and don't really know Jemma, and I can, I should, I will answer it once we get Jemma back-"

"Ok, then come with me and Raina - Raina believes that she knows where Jemma had ended up, and she has already rigged the astrolabe for us to go and get her. Shall we do that?"

"Yes," Leo answered instinctively, and off he went with Hudima (and Raina), and down they went through the Li Shi's streets for a few moments, until Leo realized several things. "Firstly - are you serious here?" he asked Raina, for a change.

"Yes."

"Ok, then secondly - shouldn't there be some preparations before we go off to an unknown world or wherever?"

"Did this already - I can see the future; didn't Skye, or Daisy, or whatever her name is now tell you that?" Raina replied.

"Wait, you know that this would happen now and here?"

"Mmm," Raina shrugged, noncommittally. "Something like that, yes."

Leo opened his mouth, closed it, blinked (his eyes, not his mouth - he was just an ordinary human, with ordinary human anatomy, thank you very much) and looked at Hudima. "I think I'm beginning to understand what you told me about her being not quite crazy earlier," he told the other man. "And just how are we going to pull it off? You have a flying saucer or something?"

"Yes, but I don't think that it will make it past Earth's atmosphere - it isn't in a very good condition," Raina replied without batting an eye, "and that is one of the reasons why we want S.H.I.E.L.D. here: we got an entire vault of alien artifacts, memorabilia and etc, and we don't have much power in case Hydra - or one of its affiliates - will come knocking; we're not much of fighters and we could use S.H.I.E.L.D.'s assistance, while in return S.H.I.E.L.D. can use our artifacts to study and to use, such as the astrolabe."

"The what now?" Fitz blinked, as the thoughts of a semi-functional spaceship and other alien items floated in his head and almost pushed-out his worry about Jemma. 

"The astrolabe," Raina replied, as she opened the door to some building. "See?"

And Leo did see - some sort of a steampunk-like contraption, which was opened, and primed, and ready to be used: in fact, as he stepped instead, the contraption sprung to life, whizzing and whirling, and...well, generating a portal to some other planet, or dimension, or whatever.

"Shall we go?" Hudima asked gently, and because Leo was being rather overwhelmed here, he just nodded in agreement, and - stepped through the portal.

Fierce winds and cold sand met him face first; he stumbled and would've fallen right back out through the portal onto Earth, if Hudima didn't grab him by the collar and together they marched into the storm.

...Several moments later the other man lit up a flame in his other hand (since he was that sort of an InHuman), looked around and froze, staring at nothingness, (at least as far as Fitz was concerned, but then again, he didn't have heat vision, not without any invention to give him exactly that on hand).

"Hello, Grant," spoke the ghost of Kara Palamas (in Spanish). "Long time no see."

Grant nodded: he could see her, even if Fitz couldn't - not that he was all that interested in ghosts, not with Jemma Simmons come barreling into him through the storm, and the two fell together in a heap. 

"Hello, Kara," Grant nodded, while remaining in his alternate form "How have you been?"

"Very poorly. Grant, you've killed me!"

"Well, technically, no. Thanks to John, I've gotten very good at using cybernetics at keeping people alive; you've been brain dead all these months, yes, but if you decided to come back, your body is waiting for you, technically alive and fully, well, repaired," Grant shrugged.

Kara stared with her ghostly eyes. "Seriously? Hah, I guess that there was a reason why I was stuck here, wherever here is-"

"The realm of the dead," Grant nodded. "So, do you want to come back or move on?"

"What do you think?" Kara smiled for real for the first time since she died. "Shall we go and take the FitzSimmons with us?"

And so they went. 

_TBC_


	12. Chapter 1.12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes breaking-up sucks. Sometimes it sucks a lot.

...While this sort of thing was going on, Skye, (also known as Daisy), was finally able to corner Lincoln in an office, where he was doing paperwork of some sort, or at least - pretending to (lately Skye had helped out May and Coulson enough times to learn the difference between the two). 

"So, you want to tell me everything the long way around?" Skye said, as she sat down across from her friend. "I'm not surprised that you're working for yor community here, it's just that, I don't know, why didn't you come to us? We would've worked something out-"

"Stop," Lincoln said with a pained expression on his face. "Daisy, you sure that you aren't related to Raina? Because you two are actually quite similar, in the long run."

"Excuse me?" Skye gave him a hostile glare. "What are you talking about?"

Lincoln hesitated, thinking it over. "After the Iliad," he finally reached a decision, "after I tried to withdraw into normal life and everything, I got a visit from Raina one evening. Hudima was there too. Raina offered me a place back here. I refused. She accepted and wish me luck working for you - S.H.I.E.L.D., i.e."

"Say what now?" Skye blinked.

"Raina can see the future-"

"I know that-"

"-and apparently she saw me as part of your agency. She and I were never particularly close while Jiaying was alive, I wouldn't exactly call her a friend, and it's mutual, but she decided to come over and to give me a counteroffer, for form's sake."

"And you accepted her offer instead?"

Lincoln hesitated, clearly thoughtful. "To be frank," he confessed to Skye, "I didn't really want to work in S.H.I.E.L.D., first of all. They- you- your agency, has a certain reputation among the InHumans and other gifted; it isn't a bad reputation, unlike Hydra or AIM for example, but it is tenacious, and some of your recruitment drives can be kind of nasty-"

"Fair enough," Skye agreed, remembering how she got dragged out of her van once upon a time - a long time ago, "but still, these are secondary details."

"Agreed," Lincoln nodded. "To be honest, all I wanted was to live a normal life and...that's it, really. But this isn't going to happen, not since I went through terragenesis...and then Jiaying did what she had done."

There was a pause, as both InHumans thought about Jiaying's last, fatal decision, to go against S.H.I.E.L.D. ...for no obvious reasons. She wasn't Hydra; Coulson was ready to make some sort of a deal with her; both the agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the InHumans of Li Shi could have happily coexisted together - the world was big enough; but instead there was a senseless bloodbath on the Iliad, where both sides lost a large number of their people.

"And so instead you decided to return here," Skye finally broke the silence.

"Yes," Lincoln confessed, "I did. Some people say that everything has a price; my price for living a normal life would probably be my powers, and I'm not ready to give them up."

"You don't have to-"

"-if I work for S.H.I.E.L.D.? Yes. But I think I will rather stay here instead," Lincoln shrugged. "This way works too, you know?"

"Lincoln," Skye said quietly. "What has happened to you? This wasn't who you were, who you are-"

"Daisy, don't start," Lincoln glared. "My world died with Jiaying. Jiaying was crazy, I had to stop her, agreed. But it cost me, I guess. You cannot enter the same river twice, I really am not the man I once was. Maybe I can be, or I could be, a different man from the one I see know, but you know? I don't know where that would take me, and for now...I don't want to be your man either. JIaying...she had groomed me, perhaps, to be Cal's replacement, with you - well, theoretical you - as her heir. You, your friends and co-workers, they brought something new to us - and paid the price, and I, we, we are all grateful for this."

"But?"

"But nothing," Lincoln shook his head. "Li Shi will cooperate with S.H.I.E.L.D., period. The end. I, for now, have no intention of being your man-"

"Excuse me?" Skye stared.

"Um, in most of Raina's visions the two of us seem to be a couple, and I'm not sure that I want that-"

"I see," Skye said in a tightly controlled tone of voice. "Excuse me." She whirled around and left.

* * *

After dropping off the reunited FItzSimmons off at one Li Shi's honeymoon suites ('cause let's be honest, the little scientists have earned it), Grant promptly went to take a bath, especially since on their arrival back to Midgard (this was how the Asgardians called Earth and the rest of the Solar System, perhaps), Kara's spirit went off to be reunited with her body - and he really needed a bath. Unlike most of Li Shi's residents, whose metamorphosis went from the outside in, Grant's took place (a long time ago) from the inside out; it included a shedding of the skin (in pieces, like that of a lizard or a chameleon rather than in a single piece as a snake would do it) and a very nasty and painful process of transformation to go with it.

Unlike Bobbi, Grant isn't in self-denial; he knows that his transformation had merely brought out what was there to begin with - the darkness; there is a reason why he is calling himself Hudima the Kinslayer in certain Hydra- and AIM-affiliated circles...in fact, there are several, and they are all obvious here. But you know what? He doesn't care. He may be evil, but he can do good, and he can fix his own messes - just look at Kara...but right now he needs a bath, a very specific and special bath, if he is to go on living and not, well, die. It's kind of bizarre, that a lack of a bath can kill him, but that's the life of an InHuman for you.

And so Grant - or rather, Hudima, as he is known among the InHuman community - goes to take his special bath and stays in it for a while, and when he does come out, Kara is already there, sitting on the edge of the bathtub and clearly enjoying the view.

"Kara!" Grant sputters, "this is a nice surprise. Let's go to the bedroom first!"

There was a pause as both Kara and Grant went through several colors, especially on their faces, until finally Kara spoke once more. 

"Ok, I think I need to try again," she said simply. "Grant, I'm breaking up with you."

There was another pause, which was broken by Grant this time. "The Hell?" he said simply. "Kara, yes, I did shoot you, but it was by accident...and I fixed you."

"I know," Kara said, miserably. "Being in Hellheim...it really widened my perspective, you know?"

"OK, and?"

Kara paused, clearly choosing her words. "I didn't love you - I still don't, not really."

"Kara," It was Grant's turn to pick his words. "I agree. We probably aren't each other's first choices, but it still doesn't mean that we can't make it work."

"Yes, that's the problem. We can. In fact, I spent years with Bobbi making it work," Kara looked away, clearly miserable. "I can make it work with you, but in the long run, it will not be unlike what I had with Bobbi - a very fancy surrogate. Grant, your heart belongs to someone else, we both know it now."

Grant opened his mouth and then closed it. "Kara," he finally said. "I don't know how to fix it...what to say...how to solve it..."

"You can't," Kara shook her hand. "Some things...even aliens cannot fix it. Grant...you need to move on. I...need to move on, to become my own person...not Bobbi's creature or even yours..."

"Can I help?" Grant asked quietly. 

"I think I will need to figure this out by myself," Kara finally looked at him once more; unfortunately, her gaze caught a certain part of his anatomy... "Um. I'm going to get a shower now, Grant. I'm sorry about this. But you're not my man, and I'm not your woman, so this is how it goes," and she's gone.

Grant just sat down and tried to figure out what to do next.

_TBC_


	13. Chapter 1.13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grant and Daisy deal with break-ups, while the FitzSimmons steal the show by pretending to be Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains some crude situations and humor. Don't like it? Wait for the next chapter to come out.

When Grant Ward got out of his (well, 'his' place of rest and relaxation) and went out once more through the streets of Li Shi, he was not happy. If he had been in S.H.I.E.L.D. he would've grinned and born it quietly; if in Hydra - then not (Dr. Whitehall considered his underlings demolishing one another on the sly to be very therapeutic - for them; of course, if they got caught, it was off to the attitude adjustment center for them, brainwashing style); but he was in Li Shi, so he had no idea as to how to behave here and now, and so just walked through the streets, trying to figure out what to do next.

It seemed so simple back when he had hit on his new plan - use S.H.I.E.L.D. to solve Li Shi's Andrew-Lash problem; he'd pull his weight, of course, and once that was done, he'd settle in Li Shi, alongside Kara, and maybe come into contact with S.H.I.E.L.D. on a part-time basis, using his secrets that his former friends didn't know about, to keep them fooled. It wasn't a perfect plan, it left plenty of possibilities to go wrong, and Grant wasn't director Coulson, who actually enjoyed improvisations of various sort, but...but it had been a plan that appeared to be workable, especially after when Raina would use the astrolabe for Grant to bring back Kara and for Leo to rescue Jemma from Hellheim, apparently, if that was how it was called?

(Grant had his doubts about this; this realm/planet/dimension sounded suspiciously Asgardian, and he didn't have too many fond memories of Asgardian natives or items, thank you very much, but a plan was a plan, and Raina was the one with the access to the astrolabe, and Grant wanted to bring Kara back, period, so there he was - and came back, too.)

So far so good, but now...it had all fallen apart, and Grant didn't honestly know where to proceed. He wasn't sure if he could stay here - with Kara around and not with him it was going to be unpleasant, to say the least - and he wasn't sure if he wanted to go back to S.H.I.E.L.D., even if he could. 

"Hey, could we talk?"

Speak of the devil, it was Skye, Daisy, Chuju, or however Grant would call her. (He would never admit it, but he had enjoyed winding up her and Fitz these past few days - apparently he had a sense of humor, thank you very much.) "Chuju, you're a woman, right?" he asked, catching him just in time from calling her Skye or Daisy: given how his luck was going, she would've figured his real identity then and there, something else that he didn't need. "So, can I ask you something feminine?"

"In a bit," Daisy looked flat-footed, but quickly caught herself. "Can you tell me about Lincoln?"

"Who?" Grant used his alternate identity to look completely confused. "The fellow from Green Branches, right? I believe that you know him better than I do-"

"Well, maybe," Daisy wasn't going to argue on this vague point, "but weren't you the one who took Raina to him?"

"Oh yes," Grant remembered. "This is him, I agree. Sometime before this all began between us, Raina asked me to fly her back to America - she doesn't know how, you see? Since I intended to humor her for my own reasons, I agreed. So, off we went, and landed and went to see this Campbell fellow. He didn't look wrong, but he wasn't happy to see us, and told us to leave. Raina tried to sell him something - he wasn't interested. So maybe she used reverse psychology on him, or maybe the disinterest was mutual, I don't know, but she shrugged, bid him good-bye and wished him good-luck working with you - the S.H.I.E.L.D. agency, I mean."

"Lincoln told me that in Raina's vision he did end up working with us-"

"Raina can foresee events in general - in details it becomes fuzzier, and she cannot guarantee that a future will remain unchanged after she had her vision, see? In some of them she saw your friend agent Fizz go and rescue his girlfriend, agent Simmons, via some sort of Hydra-like portal, so earlier today she used the astrolabe and had me help him do that here and now instead."

Daisy blinked. "...Wait, what?" she asked, clearly confused. For reasons of his own, Grant decided to misinterpret this.

"Li Shi has a huge vault full of alien technology, among other things," he replied, "well, rather- just alien technology, I guess. Part of the reason why the elders of Li Shi want a deal with S.H.I.E.L.D. is because of it - Hydra's in Japan, AIM in North Korea, and on its own Li Shi cannot deal with either them, not really. They could join them, especially Hydra, I suppose, but I don't think that your people and especially director Coulson would like this, and honestly we like you better than Hydra or AIM, too."

"Oh," Daisy blinked as she thought over this. "I didn't think of this. I-I admit I didn't really figure that Raina would be this far-sighted-"

"Well, neither did I, not really," 'Hudima' rumbled. "But, you know? Throughout her life, Raina was either by herself or with Cal Zabo, and neither option was too good. She didn't have anyone, any place to put her roots in, so now that she does, she intends to fight for it. You see?"

"I guess," Daisy muttered, thinking back on her past life, in a van. "Anyways, Lincoln?"

"Meh, when he heard that so far - back then - his future was going to be working with you in S.H.I.E.L.D., he thought this over, very hard, and decided against it. I don't know him, so I didn't pry, but did the two of you have issues?"

"No," Daisy shook her head. "We didn't have anything. Lincoln has plenty of issues, but...yeah. Sadly, Dr. Garner was our resident psychologist, and you've seen how it turned out..." she paused and added. "So, your question? And the FitzSimmons?"

Grant looked askance...and saw a commotion at the place where he had left the couple in question, as a matter of fact, so-

"Why don't we start at the end and see how your friends are faring, shall we?" he suggested to Daisy and the two of them walked that-a-way to see what was going with the FitzSimmons.

As a matter of fact, it was a mess. When Leo and Jemma had come to their senses, Leo took it upon himself to convince Jemma that it was all real, and one thing let to another, and that other thing was procreation, and Jemma's yell of "Fitz!" had been especially shrill. Sadly, Phil Coulson, who had been coming to see Jemma for himself, had ignored this cry, and walked in on the couple, and Jemma had a muscle spasm from the surprise, and right now poor Leo was stuck. In her, cough, so now the question was how to separate the two.

"...Well, don't look at me," 'Hudima' said firmly while the others waited for Lincoln to arrive with some muscle relaxant of one sort or another. "I could separate them manually, but some pieces could be left behind-"

"No! Bad idea! Bad idea!" Fitz yelled in a high tone of voice. "I want to be whole, thank you very much!"

"Yes, yes! Bad idea!" Simmons echoed the sentiment. "I want my Leo to be whole, thank you very much! Where is that man of Raina's?"

"He isn't my man," Raina glared at the Englishwoman with a blush that stained her green cheeks hazelnut brown. "And he's here."

"Yes, I am," Lincoln agreed as he walked over with his tools of the trade and gave Jemma the shot. Before long, (though for the FitzSimmons it was probably an eternity), Jemma's muscles relaxed enough for Leo to slid out of her, his member red and swollen and clearly painful. "Let's wrap it up," Lincoln continued, not sounding very sympathetic towards poor Leo's plight.

"Isn't it going in reverse?" Hunter had his own issues with sympathy, it seemed. "Shouldn't Simmons have-"

"In the name of Oscars," 'Hudima' grumbled. He moved forwards, his hands outstretched and glowing. He grabbed Fitz, who squeaked, and the glow briefly spread all over him, and when it vanished, the smaller man was in less pain than before. "This is the last time I do something like that, got it? I just broke up with my girlfriend whom I've thought of marrying; the last thing I needed was to paw another man. If it'd been your wife - maybe..."

"Sorry," Leo muttered, "and technically she isn't my wife - not yet..."

"Our priest can hold a ceremony," Raina brightly suggested, eyeing Coulson in a pointed way. "Want to do a double?"

"Maybe another time," May, instead, replied just as brightly as she moved between Coulson and the InHuman woman. "He's a bit shy and gets scared easily."

"What am I missing?" Jemma blinked and turned to the nearby person, who was Daisy.

"Let's see," Daisy grew genuinely thoughtful. "Andrew Garner is an up-and-coming villain who is working either with Hydra or some new S.H.I.E.L.D. splinter cell. He and May had a daughter some time before Bahrain so now she's our age - Garner had her as a hostage in Hydra or somewhere associated with them, 'cause Ward busted her out and handed her over to May for some plan of his own. So far we've been trying to infiltrate Andrew's friends, already had a car chase, and busted a bunch of InHumans out of the holding cell alongside Hudima over there, so now we're making a deal with Li Shi, which included your rescue."

"In other words, it's like you never left," Hunter spoke brightly, even though Bobbi tried to shush him. "Agent Simmons, welcome back! Do you want to kiss agent Fix- I mean Fizz, I mean - Fitz and make it all better?"

There was a pause, during which 'agent Fix' made his way across to 'agent Hunter' and promptly kicked the older man in his own balls.

"Oh yeah," Jemma nodded sagely to Daisy. "It's like I never left."

"Jem, welcome home," the hacktivist turned S.H.I.E.L.D. agent hugged her friend. "We missed you."

_TBC_


	14. Chapter 1.14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The trip back home, the making of new plans...

"...You know," Bobbi Morse said to break the silence on the ride home, "this sort of thing should probably stay out of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s textbooks - the future ones, anyhow. Don't you agree?"

"Bobbi," Skye decided to be the diplomatic one here, "Lance still needs ice because Leo had kicked him. Leo also needs ice because of Jemma's muscle spasm. Jemma isn't fairing so well either, and both Hudima over there and I had been dumped earlier today by our respective others, so the only one happy here is Coulson - and May, since they're flying the jet together, right?"

"From my vantage point it's more of May flying the plane, Coulson whispering sweet nothings into her ear," Jemma replied instead of Bobbi. "Had they been doing this long?"

"No, it's a recent development," Skye confessed. "It's probably a combination of Coulson's loneliness, May's family situation, and Raina's oh-so-female interest in DC that brought this out."

"Fascinating," Jemma was currently multitasking - talking to her friends and going through the agency's info on Andrew Garner and Green Branches (as well as agent Weaver and co). "So you're not sure if it's Hydra?"

"It doesn't seem to be their M.O.," Skye shrugged, "Hydra isn't known to be subtle, plus Stark Industries are involved, however marginally, so I don't think that Hydra will risk it. Bobbi, and Hudima over here, think that it is more of a Secret Empire thing - it's an organization that is similar to Hydra but different, kind of how AIM is."

Jemma grew silent; thoughtful and silent. "It is, this is," she finally spoke in a voice that wasn't as confident as it usually had been, "unfair. We've seemingly just got the best of Hydra less than a year ago, and now we learn that we've barely scratched it!"

"Ah, but look at it thisly," Hudima rumbled from his position (next to Skye). "You also got a free pass with AIM, when the Iron Man had kicked their collective behind singlehandedly, right?"

"Hey, he had help!"

"But not from S.H.I.E.L.D.-"

"So? If you feel so strongly about it, why are you with us?"

"Because Hydra, and AIM, and whatever you call it, is the worse guy," Hudima shrugged. "S.H.I.E.L.D. isn't perfect, but it gets its job done, and I had been working for it in the past, so - the devil you know?" He paused and added. "Mind you, I admit, this isn't how I expected this to end. I fully expected to propose to my girlfriend and settle down in Li Shi instead..." he trailed away and looked through the jet's window, into the dark night sky (pun not intended). 

"How nice," Jemma began, but was interrupted by Lance:

"Hey, don't diss him - part of the reason I stayed was because of Bob: if she didn't want to stick around, I'm not sure if I would. Give the man some space - not everyone got the sort of thing that you and Fizz got going on."

"Hunter, you're purposefully messing with me," Fitz growled. 

"Yes. After you kicked me so hard, you're lucky that I'm not calling you agent Fluff because of your soft and silky hair," Hunter shot back.

Leo turned red. "Jemma, I'm still sore myself; can you kick him instead?" he told his significant other.

"No," Jemma had returned her gaze to the info that Bobbi and the others had given her (to help her catch up on what she had missed). "I'm thinking," she shifted around and gazed and Bobbi: "since our infiltration had been aborted, Coulson and May and others are planning a different approach, with me and Fitz going approaching them directly, through official channels?"

"It could work," Bobbi shrugged. "We do need to explore all possible ventures-"

"If Leo's game - and will recover in time - we'll do it," Jemma said resolutely.

"...Not that I'm complaining, but why the sudden decisiveness?" Bobbi blinked. 

Jemma opened and closed her mouth several times, but finally made her call: "Because this is the only way I will be convinced that this isn't a dream, and I'm not insane, and-"

"According to the ancient people, you've been stuck in a realm that they considered to be the land of the dead," Hudima said mildly. "Asgard was the land of the gods, Helheim - the land of the dead. The fact that you've managed to survive alone is very impressive-"

"Don't," Jemma said firmly, "your InHuman approach to things is very...occult, but, nevertheless-"

"Neither of us wants to be the agents remembered for that delightful Li Shi incident," Leo said bitterly. "I don't know what you did to me afterwards-"

"I'm a pyrokinetic, all right?" Hudima shot back. "I can do fire, but fire is energy, and energy can be mastered, if you got the mind to do it. Fire can hurt, but it can also heal, especially if you trained for months and years to learn how. Chuju over here is a prodigy, she has already achieved a very great deal, but experience is also important, especially if you're a kinetic gifted, right Morse?"

"Yes," Bobbi nodded tersely and the two began to argue, or to talk, in Hindu once more.

"You're not jealous?" Jemma spoke to Lance, but Daisy answered instead - "No, why should I?" and blushed as everyone else fell silent and looked everywhere on the jet, but at her.

"Ok, a change of topic," Hunter said brightly. "Jemma, are you and Leo are going to marry soon?"

"Jemma," Leo twitched, "do you consider my idea now?"

Before Jemma could reply, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s jet promptly landed in the hanger. The doors to the pilot's cabin opened up, and out came Coulson and May, looking happier (at least with each other) and looked at the rest of their team: "What's up?"

"Well," Mack spoke as he and Joey entered the plane instead, followed by a stranger - a lady stranger. "This is Slingshot. She has arrived earlier today - apparently, the people of Li Shi think that she will be happier working for us.

"Yo," the InHuman woman said brightly. "Just call me Yo-Yo."

The other agents just exchanged a series of looks with each other and sighed - it was just another exciting day (or night) in the life of S.H.I.E.L.D.

_TBC_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, the introduction of Yo-Yo/Slingshot into this story. Any suggestions, anyone?
> 
> PS: Updated/formatted few chapters here recently.

**Author's Note:**

> Another attempt of S3 done 'right' - with Andrew doing more than just pointlessly running around killing people, Rosalind actually having a role to play, and the agents finally becoming a family once again.


End file.
